Heathern

My friend and I sat in the pew in front of my mother one Sunday morning at church.  We were giggling immaturely over hymn lyrics, delighting in our adolescent creativity while definitively proving that we could not be trusted to act like adults.

Suddenly, I felt the thump of my mother’s finger against the back of my skull.  She pitched forward in her pew quickly, and the rush of wind from her movement briefly lifted my hair.

“Quit acting like heatherns!” she hissed in my ear. 

My mother employed that word in all situations.  She thought not of one’s religious affiliation – whether one was a heathen in the traditional sense or not did not interest her – but only of one’s behavior.  To her, acting like a heathern meant acting obnoxious or, like you didn’t have any raisin’, as we say here.  Often, she meant it affectionately, although that wasn’t the case that day at church.

Mama’s accent prevented her from correctly pronouncing the word, and her Arkansan roots were seldom more apparent than when she inserted a hard ‘r’ into the second syllable.  You can imagine the crisis of confidence I had when I realized that my name, Heather, shares all but one letter with the word heathern.  Whether my moniker was bestowed on me with loving ceremony or just Mama’s commentary on children in general, I will never know.