Lizard Eater

Am changing the name on my blog, just to make it slightly more difficult to immediately discern my identity. Not that I really care if my secret identity is known; I'm not exactly Clark Kent. But there's a certain amount of freedom in anonymity.

Why Lizard Eater? Pretty simple. In A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, Helmut Thielicke refers to this time (a new theology student) as being intellectual puberty. Your voice is changing, there's changes going on in you that you don't understand, etc.

My dad refers to puberty -- regular puberty, that is, not theological puberty -- as the lizard eating stage. You know how, in springtime, cats that have access to the outdoors start chasing lizards and losing their winter coat and they just look real scrawny and ugly? He says girls do the same thing, about 12ish. Their parts just don't seem to fit together, they get a scrawny, hungry look, they're awkward -- they're in the lizard eating stage. I've seen pictures of myself at this age, and I certainly can't disagree. When Chelsea Clinton was that age, and being made fun of, he said, Now that girl's going to turn into a beauty. She's just in the lizard eating stage.

I don't think I'll physically be getting scrawny (I could only hope!), but I imagine this'll be a time of philosophical and theological awkwardness. So be it.

I wear it with pride. Lizard Eater.