Identity Crisis "Brewing" Inside Writer's Mind
by Jay Dubya 
Yesterday morning I was peering into the bathroom mirror and as usual, my reflection was staring back at me. This simple everyday act gave me time to reflect. "I'm better off than you are," I chuckled to my mirror image, "because I'm three dimensional and you are just a flat 2-D surface image of the real me," I said as my eyes noticed my lackluster likeness saying the exact same inane jargon back to my face. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the start of a very vexing identity crisis.
I stepped downstairs, sauntered through the kitchen and den and then entered the laundry room. "Where are you going?" my wife inquired.
"Over to my mom's for breakfast," I replied.
"Don't stop at that doughnut place," my spouse commanded. "You're getting too fat and old looking."
"I'll see ya' later," I defiantly answered as I entered the door leading to the garage. I pressed the button and the electronic garage' door opened.
I carefully pulled out of my driveway onto the White Horse Pike, and soon my characteristic rebellious nature arose. 'I can't wait to buy those doughnuts," I said to my 2-D image in the flat rearview mirror. "I'll even buy the kind without the holes in the center so that I get more doughnut to munch on," I laughed while thoroughly enjoying my general naughtiness. I flicked on my car stereo and heard The Who singing and playing "Who Are You? Who-who, who-who!" The music reminded me of my 2-D bathroom mirror' reflection so I hurriedly switched stations, even though The Who are of "My Generation" and I really like the songs of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.
I then realized something significant. This was the continuation of a once more subtle identity crisis, which had originated a month before when I had spilled some Coor's Lite onto my shirt at a restaurant and my wife criticized in her familiar soprano on the way home in the car, "You smell like a brewery! Take that shirt off when we get home so I can throw it into the washing machine."
I switched the radio station from Philadelphia's WOGL-FM playing the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" back to Trenton's WNJO's spinning of "Who Are You?" Then it hit me. "You smell like a brewery!"
My family name originally was Wiesnieski. The Polish name was Germanized around 1900 to Wiessner. That transition was done because Germans were regarded as highly skilled workers and commanded higher paying salaries in Baltimore, Maryland than the newly arrived Polish immigrants did.
I recalled that my father's oldest sister, Aunt Marie Mayor once told me that a prominent business once existed on Gay Street in downtown Baltimore named the John F. Wiessner Brewery. I remembered Aunt Marie showing me in her club basement several empty brown-bottled' souvenirs appropriately labeled "The John F. Wiessner Brewery." I WAS named after a brewery, and the irony was that my wife had said I smelled like one!
I needed to rationalize in a hurry. My frail ego had to defend its most recent fracture. "Ha ha!" I chuckled, "when I type in John Wiessner on Google or Yahoo Internet' search engines, my name comes up listed before and ahead of the John F. Wiessner Brewery. At last, I am more notorious than the brewery I had been named after. I have a higher Internet' ranking than that dumb brewery does."
It doesn't matter if my last name is spelled Wiessner or Weissner (my real last name follows the spelling rule, I before E except after C). My last name is sometimes spelled WEISSNER because one of my credit cards spells it that way, and when I bought my computer, I used that particular credit card. So, because of a clerical error at the credit card company, my e-mail addresses are also misspelled Weissner, and my last name appears on the Internet with two different spellings. Despite these difficulties, MY family' name (either Wiessner or Weissner) still commands more respect on Google and on Yahoo than does the brick and mortar brewery that I had been named after.
"Did you know that I am finally out of the shadow of the John F. Wiessner Brewery in Baltimore?" I told the suddenly startled doughnut employee at the carry' out window. The woman gave me a very strange look as she handed me my white bag and change.
As I drove to my mother's place, an additional thought hit me like a ton of bricks and mortar. My author' pseudonym Jay Dubya when typed on Google or Yahoo commands much more respect than John Wiessner, John Weissner or the John F. Wiessner Brewery does, but the real dilemma is this. I now have more identity as a "pen name" than I do as a real person, or as a real person named after a brewery. That grim realization only added to my depressing identity' quandary. Jay Dubya does not appear on my birth certificate!
As I steered my metallic blue Buick LeSabre from Bellevue onto Marlyn Avenue, other annoying ideas haunted my vulnerable psyche. My former high school (Bishop Egan) on the Levittown (Pennsylvania) Parkway is now St. Michael's School and no longer exists at its former location. I had graduated in 1960 from Edgewood Regional High School, but that institution is now called Winslow Regional High School. In 1965 John Wiessner had graduated from Glassboro State Teachers College, which now possesses the designation Rowan University.
I was named after a brewery in Baltimore, Maryland. My pen name is more famous than my real name. One of my high schools no longer exists in the same place and my other high school and my former college both have different names. A good deal of my memorable past has been almost systematically erased from history.
Now you know what has been "aleing" me. An identity crisis is brewing inside my mind, heart and soul. I pulled into my mother's driveway. "Oh well," I said to my reflection in the rearview mirror, "I'm still going to enjoy my doughnuts regardless of who I might happen to be!"
, (Jay Dubya)
Copyright-The Hammonton (New Jersey)Gazette
November 4, 2001 edition
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