English
Open-form narrative, a personal story that emphasizes a distinct, subjective view about a specific topic that relates to literacy and/or media: My name is Daniel.
I was born in San Felix, a poor town located between the Orinoco and Caroni River, the most important rivers or Venezuela. It was May 5th 1983, two months later after the Black Friday, not the Black Friday the people of United States of America have after the Thanksgiving Day, but one of the most difficult day my country suffered in the last forty years. Our currency, the bolivar lost 50% of its value and the country entered in non-stop inflation syndrome that stays until the current days.
That may 5th 1983, my parents were undecided about my name, my father wanted to call me Xavier, like Xavier Serbia the current CNN anchor in the Latin American channel, which was in that moment the brilliant singer of the most important music group of Latin America, Menudo. Menudo was a five-singer group, teenager group, like the Backstreet Boys in the United States of America in the nighties and One Direction in the current years in the United Kingdom. Xavier, sound for me a nice name, because my lastname starts with “P”, maybe I could call myself XP, like the Microsoft software and would be the last guy in the school list of students.
My mother didn’t have any problem with my name but the nurse thought different about it. The nurse, whose name I don’t know, told to my mother: “the name of your son must me Daniel, because he will naughty when he grow up. She told her to my mother that for two reasons:
The first reason is I was born sleep; I stayed sleep from the moment I got out from my mother and stayed in that situation for thirty six hours. My mother was very concerned about it, she told to the doctor: “please, wake him up, is he death?” The nurse, told her: “in this moment he sleeps, but when he grow up he will not”.
The second reason for the name was for the comic series “Deniss the menace”. In Latin America and Spain the title of the comic series changed by “Daniel El Travieso” or “Daniel the Naughty” in English. From the eighties it was ingrained in the lore that the kids with problem of conduct were compared with that blond-hair kid of the comic series.
I have a lot of friends whose name are Xavier and Daniel. In my neighborhood I had a neighbor of my same age whose name was Xavier –he lived in house thirteen, me in house nine- and three friends of first grade school whose name was Daniel. Xavier from house thirteen is Colombian, he moved to Caracas when I was in fourth grade. From that moment I didn’t know more Xavier in my life, only the “original” Xavier Serbia which I watch every night in his TV Show “Dinero” (Money in English) with the Mexican economist and journalist Gabriela Frias. About the people with name Daniel, every year without exaggerate I know at least one Daniel or Daniela, the name for the girls.
An interesting fact about the names in my neighborhood: My father (1951) and my brother (1977) are named Ruben; My neighbors of house ten, father (1954) and older son (1979), are named Ruben too. Their name wasn’t inspired from a comic series but in the Bible, Ruben means in Hebrew: “Here is a male son”.
My name, I knew then, was in the Bible too, in fact, is a Book in the Old Testament which meaning is “God is my Judge”.
