The interchangeable names you can call a Hispanic away from home
"Juan," the nurse in the waiting room called out.
"Juan," she repeated.
I was busy sitting with my daughters on the little indoor playground, waiting for them to be called, when an older white woman approached me and said, "They are looking for you."
Can you believe it? The racism. The privilege. The… Okay, fine, I'm kidding. I couldn't care less.
It was priceless to see her face when I calmly told her, "Yeah, no, I heard… But that's not me. It could be me. I guess I can be a Juan."
Because it's true, we can all be Juan.
By all, I mean all of us Latino males.
The woman's face dropped; she tried to recover with an "Oh, I'm so sorry he dresses just like you."
Now, people, let me tell you. I didn't look like Juan, and he did not dress like me. That's not to say anything about how Juan dresses or looks. We are just different, as sometimes people from the same regions can be, this region being ALL of South America.
I drive forty minutes to Point Reyes, a small coastal city near my home.
I go to this clinic because our daughters' midwife works there. We like her, and she is a Registered Nurse who can do wellness checks.
Also, this was my wife's clinic growing up.
However, it is a small clinic in a small city, which means it is primarily frequented by farm laborers who work in nearby wineries and orchards. Juan belongs to such a population, whereas I belong to the frazzled, sleep-deprived suburban dad who wonders whether I will ever make it as a writer.
So Juan and I look a tad different.
But I could be a Juan because I look Hispanic.
And I definitely look Hispanic.
Except for that one guy who, on a Sunday afternoon at the Barlow in Sebastopol, asked me if I had seen the half-Persian presidential candidate on Fox News and said, "He looks like you but more Persian."
To which I thought, "Well, that shouldn't be hard since I have zero Persian in me."
But I definitely look Hispanic, so you can interchange my name for any of the common Latino name placeholders, and I won't care.
Cultural traditions are unimaginative like that, which means that there is an abundance of Juanes, Joses, Carloses, and Pedroses among Hispanics. My family alone has four Carlos. My dad is one of them. He is Carlos, and I am also Carlos, which makes it interesting for people when they look me up online and find a Carlos Garbiras, a fervent Christian pastor in Colombia, and another Carlos Garbiras, who writes jokes about underwear in California.
One time, I went to lunch with a representative of a large insurance company we worked with. John, one of our company's executives, invited me to join them.
When the representative arrived, I shook her hand, introduced myself, and gave her my business card. We walked from our office in Downtown Petaluma to Sugo Trattoria, a nice little Italian place a block away.
We had appetizers, we had lunch, we had wine, something known in the industry as a "boozy client lunch." We told stories and jokes. We spent more than two hours together, breaking bread. We walked back to our office and said goodbye. I shook her hand, and she left.
She emailed John a few hours after lunch and told him, "It was nice meeting you and Pedro."
John and I were the only ones at lunch, so you guessed it right, I WAS PEDRO!!
It is so funny to me that people can interchange my name with whatever other Hispanic name comes to their mind.
Neither of these women was out to get me, to make me feel less than. They made an honest mistake, one that is irrelevant to me, as I can't control what people call me.
I would love to impart to my daughters this small lesson: "It doesn't matter what the world calls you. It only matters what you call yourself."
So, please, from now on, call me Juan Garbiras.
Like two of my cousins and my paternal grandfathers.
