What's In A Name?

I was supposed to substitute teach this afternoon at my daughter’s high school, but I got a frantic call about 10 minutes before the 1st bell rang asking if I could come in early.  As I began the day, the Art teacher’s chid got sick at daycare and she had to leave, so I ended up going in to be the Art teacher for the rest of the day.  I almost felt guilty about getting paid to encourage kids to get excited about art ... even when they thought they couldn't draw!

So... today’s Inhalation is going to be easy and fun.  I wore a new pair of shoes in the morning to try breaking them in before teaching and ended up spending the whole day in them.  OUCH!  As soon as I post this, I am going to pack lunches and run a nice, warm bath to soak them in!

INHALE:  In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote that “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...”  Most of us don’t get to pick our own names, they are chosen for us.  By adulthood, we have made peace with our names and how oddly or plainly they may be spelled.  I didn’t like Jennifer as much as Jennie until I got older because I only heard it along with my middle name when I was in really big trouble!  Do you know the ancestry of your name?  What the name itself means and who, if anyone, you were named for?  Sometimes there is a rich family heritage being celebrated or a name that held special meaning for one of your parents.  Sometime parents just have really twisted senses of humour.  My own grandmother was called Jet Black.  As a teacher and now a school principal, my husband, Nick, has seen his share of interesting names.  Today is all about celebrating the name you bear.  If you go by your middle name or have a special name you prefer, you may use it for the exhalation below.

EXHALE:  Turn on your computer.  If you have programs like Paint or Photoshop, you can get really creative with this activity, but all you really need is a simple word document program and some interesting fonts.  The kids at high school swear by Dafont.com , but I haven’t yet downloaded anything from them to our home computers.  The idea of the activity is to find a DIFFERENT font for each letter of your name.  Pick shapes and styles that appeal to you and show off your personality.  Are you formal and elegant?  Fun and funky? Mysterious and exotic?  Solid and dependable?  Try to find fonts in your list that really resonate with your view of yourself.  I made another layer in photoshop of colours that I liked and placed it behind my chosen fonts before merging them into a .jpg file.  Have fun, play and then print out a copy of your name to stick into your book.