Technically Speaking...

My grandmother called her refrigerator a Frigidaire—even though it was an Amana. She also referred to all wallpaper as Sanitas, all aluminum foil as Reynolds Wrap, and all plastic bowls with lids as Tupperware.

And I am guilty of the same thing. All copiers are Xeroxes, all overnight mail is Fedex and I google things even when I use Bing. White school glue is Elmer’s and all tape is Scotch.

I also blur some professions. Every teacher who ever stood in front of me in college was a professor; all accountants are CPAs. Anyone who has the capacity to issue a parking ticket even if their uniform is brown and not navy is a policeman; and all technicians who work in the doctor’s office including the ones whose only task is to rip off the paper from the examining table are called nurses.

I make these references irrespective of paper certification with no intent to deceive.

And so while a label I might apply to myself would be a writer, technically have no business doing so. My bachelor’s degree is in biology and my singular salaried position was in a lab. The only material I have ever had published was an article submitted to The Catskill Mountain News by my Aunt Jackie and cousin Gary 20 years ago.

I am a writer only because I write. I am because I do.

Shakespeare’s Juliet asks What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would still smell as sweet.

Which is why I will continue to blow my nose into a Kleenex, consider myself a writer, and understand that a hospital head nurse is a physician as much as (or even more than) a physician.Because labels are only letters in a  linguistic arrangement; and papers of certification indicate not the degree of know-how.