STREETSIDE STORY OF THE MONTH

To Be or Not To Be
by Ioane Sao

When I started the fifth grade, I was scared to say my name, Ioane, to everybody. In my fifth-grade classroom, I could see a messy room with weird decorations. I could smell vinegar and yellow air coming in the window. The time was August 28, 2004, at 8:45 a.m. I was in a terrible mood, mixed with sickness because it was the first day of school. I could hear my mom talking to me in a goofy way. I could still taste the rooster that I had that morning for breakfast. I could also taste a cup full of soy sauce from a restaurant. It was very hot outside, and I was sweating. I could feel my bones in the wrong places.

I whispered, "I'm afraid to say my name."

Then a student asked me, "Why are you afraid to say your name?"

Another student said, "He's a Samoan."

Then my teacher asked me "What is your name?"

After the teacher said that, I blurted out with an angry tone, "My Samoan name is Ioane."

Ioane is a Samoan name. It is the Samoan way of saying "John" in English. So I had a choice: to choose my Samoan name, or use my English name. I remembered that my mom gave me this name. If I didn't choose my Samoan name, my mom would be ashamed of me.

My mom has curly short hair and eye contact glasses. Every time I think about my mom, I think about how she always likes to move around. She also talks in a very goofy way. My mom likes to annoy me by mimicking me every time I talk to her. She tells me that she feels confused when I talk to her, which is another annoying thing to me. She also loves to sing her favorite songs in her car, like hip-hop, jazz, rap and sometimes rock.

I thought that, if I used my Samoan name, people would laugh and make jokes about my name. The last thing I thought about was whether this was going to change my life if I picked my Samoan name. My time was up. The teacher called on me, and told me to stand up and say my name as loud as I could. So I made my decision and said out loud, "Ioane." Everybody looked at me in a crazy way, saying "Ugh." But I ended up feeling happy after school.