#6 Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 2006

Countless times last year as one of my classrooms contently worried about our grades our teacher gave us a mantra to repeat: I am not a number. I am not a number. I am not a number. I came to believe her even if it didn't help so much when the less-than-spectacular grades came back in. So when I began reading about Elizabeth Gilbert's adventures in Bali I was a little surprised when it came to the Balinese names. The four most popular names translate into First, Second, Third, and Fourth. I understand that this is a different culture and all that but, among other reasons, this seems like a very confusing naming system. Can you imagine?

"Hey First, no not you, the other First! Yeah, I was here first!"

"But you are Third!"

"I know but I am first in line and you are second."

"But SHE'S Second!"

Oy vey. The whole situation reminds me of an excerpt from a book called The Phantom Tollbooth. The main character is trying to explain the concept of names to a character called the Dodecahedron. The Dodecahedron replies, "How terribly confusing. Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless."

In both situations I can see the point made by having names be numbers but my argument is that it simply does not apply. Just by talking about someone named Third I could be referring to a fourth of the Balinese population. I believe that individuals need to be named individually; not as numbers.