Being unique isn’t always easy

‘ ‘ ‘ One of the interesting things you learn in English class is that the word unique can’t be… ‘ ‘ ‘ One of the interesting things you learn in English class is that the word unique can’t be qualified. Something can be rare, kind of rare, or extremely rare, but something can only be unique or not unique. It’s one-of-a-kind, or it isn’t. ‘ ‘ ‘ I wrote about this in my hit educational children’s book, ‘You’re Not Very Unique.’ It has become a mainstay in classrooms across America, especially for the coveted ‘bitter and heavily tenured’ sub-market of public school teachers. You might be familiar with the sequel, ‘No, You Little Bastards: You’re Not Even Kind of Unique.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ In contrast to everyone else, I’m unique. I’m the only Lewis Lehe in the entire world, the only person on planet Earth with my name. That’s why I often use ‘we’ as the agent of actions that only I carry out, with ‘we’ referring to, ‘all of us Lewis Lehes.’ And, I’m unique without even having to pull out my middle name, which is James. ‘ ‘ ‘ That’s not to say I’m the only Lewis Lehe in history. There was a Lewis Lehe who lost his leg at Gettysburg, then covered the wound with maggots to eat away the infected flesh and prevent gangrene as he lay on the battlefield for three days. His single remaining leg is a good analogy for the name Lewis Lehe. ‘ ‘ ‘ I like calling attention to the fact that I’m the only Lewis Lehe. ‘Why do we need Social Security numbers when we have names?’ I ask my friends Sarah Miller and Li Huang. ‘I was afraid real people would think the characters were based on them,’ I explain to my publisher, answering why I named all the characters in my novel Lewis Lehe. I also wrote a column about it once. ‘ ‘ ‘ No doubt, some people will get jealous at how unique I am. Those people will have an easy time sending me hateful messages on Facebook or mail bombs to my house, because whether searching ‘Lewis Lehe’ on Facebook or in the White Pages, you’ll only get one result. But if you’re really that upset about it, you just can’t fall asleep at night thinking, ‘The unlikelihood of his unique name is driving Lewis Lehe to narcissistic attitudes that border on solipsism ‘mdash; if there was only something I could do to strip him of his title and thereby deflate his ego.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ You might not be able to think of anything on your own, but I brainstormed with every single Lewis Lehe in the whole world and came up with two ideas. ‘ ‘ ‘ First, you can have a baby and name it after me. ‘ ‘ ‘ Second, you can change your name to my name. ‘ ‘ ‘ However, there’s a good reason that you might not want to take these drastic measures. ‘ ‘ ‘ One of the interesting things you learn watching the Spelling Bee on ESPN4 is that the letter ‘h’ is spelled out as ‘aitch.’ You might live your whole life without having to spell out the letter ‘h,’ but then again, your name isn’t Lewis Lehe, is it? You’ve never had to write on a form that your last name is pronounced as if there’s no aitch in it. It’s a tough row to hoe, and you’ve never even had to write the following paragraphs. ‘ ‘ ‘ Often when I explain that my last name is pronounced ‘Lee,’ people say, ‘Oh, so the aitch is silent?’ The truth is that the aitch is pronounced, but it’s pronounced at the end of my middle name James to make it sound like, ‘Jamesh.’ It’s like how, in Bret Favre’s name, the ‘r’ jumps backwards over the ‘v.’ Except my aitch jumps back over the ‘L’ and the ‘e’ to lodge itself just after the ‘s.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ You’re probably wondering, ‘But Lewis, what if I’m just saying your first and last name? After all, because you’re the only Lewis Lehe, there’s not much reason to get James involved in this.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ That’s a good point. The aitch is still not silent. Nothing can silence the aitch. So, the correct way to pronounce Lewis Lehe is to say, ‘Lewis Lee’ and then, a few seconds later, to sigh. Everyone sighs with the same aitch sound. The sigh is essential, because otherwise there will be tons of confusion about whether you mean me or my roommates and constant companions Lewis and Louis Lee. ‘ ‘ ‘ This is complicated, and it’s probably one of the reasons my grandfather married my Puerto Rican grandmother. Aitches aren’t pronounced in Spanish, so she probably had no idea what she was getting into. After giving up the sweet last name Arana, which is awesome and means spider, she was doomed to a life of explaining her last name to countless strangers. A fellow parishioner at my church in Argentina was named Luis Arana. ‘You’d better thank God for your name,’ I thought, kneeling beside the blessed man I could have been. ‘ ‘ ‘ Being unique is complicated ‘mdash; clearly not for everybody. But what makes us unique makes us special. So I’m proud of my name and you should be of yours, no matter your ethnicity, no matter what your ancestors did, no matter how hard it is to explain. Especially you, Luis Arana. E-mail Lewis at ljl10@pitt.edu.