Another Tabita!

Fredrik (potential bro-in-law) came back from a personal retreat at a monastery yesterday. The biggest news from his time there (for me) is that there was a monastery dog (Jack Russel Terrier) named Tabita. Apparently, it had a little jacket that had T-A-B-I-T-A written in big letters. He found it rather amusing...

I always thought that my name was a little weird and kind of annoying. Annoying in the sense that I always have to spell it out for any new person that has to write it down for some reason. I will never forget my week in high school:

We had recently moved to Värnamo and I had applied to the Economics program. The first day of school, all first year students were supposed to gather in the large auditorium to hear their class assignment. They called the name of each class and the names of all the students that were supposed to be in that class. They called the two economics classes, but not me. In fact, they called all the classes, but not me. At the end of the ordeal, I was sitting alone in the middle of the auditorium with only the principal and a couple of administrative people left on the stage. At this time, I was extremely shy with new people and mostly felt like running out the back doors and never coming back... but I wobbled down the stairs (the big kind, where you almost have to take two steps on each stair, but not quite) and reported the error. It seems all the class lists had been printed before my application processed completely. They eventually figured out in which class I was supposed to belong (E1B) and a nice lady escorted me to my homeroom.

When I entered the classroom, 30 curious 16-year-olds switched their attention away from the teacher and turned to stare at me. Uncomfortable! I quickly slid into an empty seat toward the front and waited for the next steps. The teacher asked for my name and instead of waiting for the "How do you spell that?" question, I decided to spell out my name immediately, so I replied with a rather loud and exasperated voice:

"Tabita, T-A-B-I-T-A."

Whew - did I hear about that one for at least a year from my classmates. Great first impression... That's me!

These days I have learned to appreciate the uniqueness of my name, the beautiful story that goes along with it (see Bible - Letter of Acts), and the fact that the only other creature I know of with this name is a Jack Russel Terrier at a Swedish Monastery.