“Name ?”
“Raised To-Be Diminished,” the young woman answered matter-of-factly.
“Ha ! Ha !” The Questioner barked. “Very funny. Thanks for waking me up. Now, Name ?”
“Raised To-Be Diminished.”
The Questioner raised her eyebrows and frowned, but kept tapping her keyboard. “Father’s Name ?”
“Hardly Gonna-Be Diminished.”
“ You’re not gettin’ a rise out-ta’ me, kiddo. Might as well stop tryin,’” the Questioner informed the young Woman answering her Questions. “Mother’s Name ?”
“Born To-Be Diminished.”
“Shoulda’ seen that one comin’,” the Questioner interjected. “Mother’s maiden Name ?”
“Born To-Be HummingBird.”
“Your Mama went from Being a HummingBird of Ecstatic Joy To Bein’ Diminished ?”
“That’s my daddy’s last Name, Ms.. What else should my Mama have been
Called ?”
“Just out of curiosity, young lady, who Named you ?”
“My Papa. My Daddy,” Raised To-Be Diminished beamed from ear-to-ear.
“You like your Name, girl ?”
“Don’t feel one way or another about it. I was Given my Name at Birth. I wouldn’t know what else to call myself.”
“Were you…I mean, errr…Raised To-Be Diminished, that is.”
“Well, yes. But when you’re Raised To-Be Diminished you don’t know that that’s what’s happenin’ to ya’, ‘cause you don’t know anything else. Bein’ Diminished is all you know. All you know how To-Be. When you’re Raised To-Be Diminished that’s just Who and What you Are. Who and What you’ll BeCome. You can’t Be anything else, ‘cause you don’t know anything else or anything better. You’re just Raised To-Be Diminished. And that’s all you ever Can Be or Will Be. That’s just the Facts of it, Ma’am. Why are you makin’ so much over my Name anyways ? What’s you’re Name ?” Raised To-Be Diminished asked belligerently.
“Elizabeth the Great.”
“Really ?”
“Yes, why ?”
“Are you ?”
“Am I what ? Great ?”
“Yeah, Great. Are you Elizabeth the Great ?”
“I like to think so. I try To-Be.”
“I like that word, Great, that is,” Raised To-Be Diminished explained. “It’s full of High Hopes, Future Promises and Expectations.”
“Ooo, I like the way you put that, Raised To-Be Diminished. Hesitating, the Questioner asked, “Do you understand why I asked about your Name,
now ?”
“Yeah, if I had been Born to live up to a Privileged Name like yours, I’d wonder about a Name like mine, too. But until the Day came that I Realized that I had been Born To-Be, Raised To-Be Diminished, I didn’t know anything different. It always Felt wrong….Being called that Name, I mean. I always Questioned it, but because it was my Given and Legal Name that is Who and What I was, and that was all there was to it.”
Raised To-Be Diminished lowered her Voice even more. “I was Born to a Caged Life. And my Cage was the Name Given to me, and accepted by me, ‘cause for a very long time I truly did not know or understand that things could Be so very different for me. But, one day, I Woke up. I mean really Woke up, and then my Name began to take on some very different meanings and directions to me. My Name was still my Cage, but it also BeCame my Teacher. And I BeCame my Name’s Student - fully Awakened and Aware Student. That Day of Realization - of my budding True Self Awareness - my baby first steps toward my wantin’ my True Self Actualization, whether I could Have it or not, created the Possible Keys of Release from my pre-ordained Cage.”
“How could your Name - your Cage BeCome your Teacher or a Teacher in any positive sense of the word ?” The Questioner queried.
“Well, for instance, I learned that folks with Names like Bubu, Peggy, Kai, Elkhorn, Isaac, Svetlana, Margie, Alice or any other Name in any other Place in the World lived in Cages, too, that didn’t have anything - or at least, not much of anything, to do with their Names.”
“You really know someone Named, Bubu ?”
“Sure, I do. Bubu’s my Brother. Bubu Dumb Diminished. He was Born and Raised to think that he was ’Dumber than a box of rocks’, and my Daddy never let him forget that either. He was a real Hammerhead Teacher. He would mercilessly come at’cha’, and come at’cha’, until you just got exhausted and gave up and said, “Alright, already, I’m Dumber than a box of rocks, Daddy !”
Raised To-Be Diminished shrugged her shoulders, “Daddy was Relentless. In fact, other Folks and other Societal Systems that you bump into throughout your LifeTime Can and Will Be just as Mercilessly Relentless as my Hammerhead Daddy. He was The Decider and we were the Decided Upons.”
Raised To-Be Diminished shrugged her shoulders again and continued, “In fact, in my Life’s diminished experiences I have Learned that if The Deciders are Sociopathic Narcissists, are driven solely by overblown Egos, overblown Needs, Desires and Selfish, purely Self Serving Envisionings of Power, Greed and Control, then Folks like me, Raised To-Be Diminished, don’t stand a Chance in this World or the next.”
‘The Decided Upons Diminished like me and Bubu, have to Learn to adapt to being stepped upon and stepped over. The Diminished Decided Upons are Raised To-Be, and propagandized to believe, that they Are, and Should Be, Worth Less and Paid Less. And that they Should Understand and UnQuestioningly Accept that they Deserve to be Worth Less and Paid Less, and that there is Individual and Social Honor and Respectability in their UnQuestioning Acceptance of their Being Worth Less and Paid Less in the over scheme of things by The Deciders, and in the World Created by and Controlled by The Deciders.”
“In the World Created by and Controlled by these Types of Raised To-Be Deciders, the Diminished Decided Upons are nothin’ but Beasts of Burden. The Deciders Burdens, are heaped on top of the Burdens the Diminished Decided Upon’s are already bearing through their already Diminished and Decided Upon Lives.”
“The Deciders have decided that all of the Real Burdens of the World (Poverty decided upon and created by The Deciders for The Deciders real and lied about Reasonings and UnReasonings, UnAttended to Illnesses and Maladies decided upon and situationally created by The Deciders for The Deciders real and lied about Reasonings and UnReasonings, Wars decided upon by The Deciders for The Deciders real and lied about Resonings and UnReasonings, Chemical and Biological Poisonings decided upon and created by The Deciders for The Deciders real and lied about Reasonings and UnReasonings…..etc.).”
“We’re just Diminished and Decided Upon Invisibles. Rubbish. We’re Expendable. They convince us through a LifeTime of Individualized, Privatized, Social Structures and Corporate Structures Propaganda and all consuming Consumer Behavioral Training and Machinations to swallow their Hogwash. And like the Diminished and Diminishable Fools that we are Raised To-Be, we Buy it and Gulp it down whole.”
“Yes, that’s right the Diminished Decided Upons, the Raised To-Be Diminished Folks like me Participate in and actually Help The Deciders to Diminish OurSelves, and keep OurSelves Diminished throughout the entirity of our Diminished and Decided Upon Lives. It’s Crazy ! We’re all Crazy, and we’re all perpetuating it Knowingly and UnKnowingly each and every moment of all of our live-long Lives !”
The Questioner was taken aback. “How can we Change things ? You’re aware of all of these things. And now, after Communicating and Listening to you, I am, too. So, how do we help you EmPower Yourself ?
Raised To-Be Diminished shrugged her shoulders in response once again. “Power ? My Power is the Ability and Adaptability to Survive Being Diminished throughout my LifeTime. To Survive being Raised To-Be Diminished.”
“Even in democracies, if We the People, Diminished Decided Upons or
not, don’t Vote, because Our Voting Rights are deliberately taken away from us by The Deciders cheap, ImMoral and UnEthical legal governing tricks to keep things going Their Way, ’cause The Deciders ImMorally and UnEthically believe that The Diminished Decided Upons aren’t Worth having anything Equal To what The Deciders have. The Diminished Decided Upons don’t Deserve anything Equal To what The Deciders have. Then Our democracy is meaningless and in actuality nonexistent. Our democracy BeComes Diminished so that The Deciders can Greedily and Selfishly Control and have Power over EveryThing and EveryBody, while calling their Created World: Democratic, Free, full of Decider Liberties, Opportunities and Equal Rights for all The Deciders ! Let The Decider Freedoms Ring-a-ling-ling !”
“Heck, some of The Deciders deliberately MisUse and Abuse the Sacred Language of Our revered ForeFathers and ForeMothers: Democracy, Freedom, Equal Basic Human Rights, Human Dignity, Equal Opportunities for One and All, Personal Liberties, and all of the Responsibilities individually and socially that go along with all of those Ideas and Ideals. Some of The Deciders use those very Sacred Words and Meanings as Cloaking Devices for their own Narcissistic-Sociopathic Gains, Desires, Greeds and Needs and Perverse Plans of Diminishment for EveryBody and EveryThing not deemed to Be A or The Decider.”
The InDecisive Questioner stared silently at Raised To-Be Diminished, wondering why she had ever begun her derisive conversation with the Worthless and Paid Less young Woman to begin with.
Raised To-Be Diminished had seen The Questioner’s expression before in the eyes of other lesser and so-called Greater Deciders. She shrugged and said, “But what do I Know ? I’m just Raised To-Be Diminished.”