I am a totally average 21-year-old male: I’m 5-foot-10, I have brown hair and eyes, I like sports and I assume I’ll become a millionaire rockstar fighter pilot some day (thanks to my major in communications).

The only thing that sets me apart is my name, Seamus. When people hear it for the first time – usually as I am correcting their pronunciation of ‘See-muss’ – it always elicits a reaction of, ‘Oh, what a cool name!’ Or my favorite, ‘Why, you must be pretty Irish, eh?’ To which I respond, ‘Why, you must be pretty lucky I’m not punching you in the neck.’

So imagine my displeasure at learning there was another Seamus on campus. Seamuses – Seami? – are like non-liberal professors: one per campus is plenty.

Thus, I arranged a meeting. My plan was to prove I was far more Seamusesque than this imposter, and reclaim my monopoly on Seamus-hood by forcing him to take a different name, perhaps D’Brickashaw.

When he arrived, though, I got nervous: He was wearing a Red Sox cap, he had red in his beard and his voice was straight out of South Boston. He was the genuine article. This guy couldn’t have been more Irish if he was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms drenched in Guinness with one hand and pimpslapping the Queen of England with the other.

I asked him his name.

‘Seamus Patrick Walsh,’ he said.

‘Seamus Rory O’Connor for me,’ I replied. This was a lie. My full name is Seamus Rory Theodore O’Connor, because my parents think they are hilarious. But if I allowed the public to know of my half-German blood, the IRA would confiscate my ‘100% Irish’ Abercrombie t-shirt.

I pressed on.

‘Is it true that people sometimes confuse you for me?’ I asked.

‘All the time,’ he sighed. ‘There’s probably been three or four times where people come up to me, I introduce myself and they say, ‘Oh, do you write for The D.O.?’ and I say ‘No, I’m sorry.’ It seems like they want you more than they want me, at this point.’

Ha! A feeble attempt at flattery, which actually was all it took to give my arrogant self a massive ego-boner.

I cut right to the chase: ‘Why do you deserve to be the only Seamus on campus?’

Fake Seamus’ face grew long. ‘Well, I’ve lived with a Seamus near me all my entire life, so I feel like it’s been my time to take it by myself,’ he said. ‘Since I was 8, my next door neighbor’s name was Seamus, spelled the same way. I thought it was so unfair that I had to be grouped with him my entire life. But now I have you.’

He said this the way a former alcoholic might say, ‘But now I have cancer.’

Immediately, I felt his pain. When I was 17, another Seamus joined my club swim team. Furious, I challenged him to a race for the name, with every intent of simply drowning him once we hit the water. He was 8.

I realized then the man across from me was not my enemy, but my friend. Here was the only other person for hundreds of miles who knew what it felt like to be called ‘Shameless,’ ‘Shamu,’ ‘Semen’ and ‘Gaywad’ – actually, that nickname might not have been related to my name. Regardless, this man was equally as deserving of the name Seamus as I was.

With the matter settled, I let Seamus go, knowing I had gained a valuable ally. Now, the next time somebody asks, ‘Hey, are you that guy who wrote that trash about the marching band?’ I can proudly say, ‘Nope, you want the other Seamus.’

Published on September 25, 2006 at 12:00 pm