Bills. Hate 'em;
gotta pay 'em.
When our oldest was born, we gave him a name that truly does
exist in baby books and was actually quite popular at the time, but it was
still an unusual name. One friend of
ours, Bill, was extremely offended by our choice of names. After all, Bill came from a family of
Williams and Marks and other strong Anglo-Saxon names.
Finally, one fall Friday afternoon, our friend erupted about
our terrible naming ability, as if we had failed parenting school or
something. He didn't have any kids; he
didn't have any responsibilities; he didn't even have a steady girlfriend. He started yelling, "I just don't like
your kid's name!"
I let him talk himself out and waited until he and the rest
of the guys took uncomfortably long swigs of beer to avoid the conversation
lull. Calmly I picked the baby up and
brought him right over to our friend. I
plopped the child into the big man's lap, announcing, "We don't care much
for BILLS either, but we put up with you, don't we?"
If your name is a common homonym, you might want to consider
its dual meaning before hurling stones at someone else's name. Bill.
Dick. Fanny.
And that goes for people who run immigration centers,
too. We knew a boy who came to America
with his parents from Asia. They wanted
to Americanize their son, so they decided to name him Alan. The only problem was that their pronunciation
and the worker's intelligence level resulted in the poor boy being registered
as Airline. That's right, you heard that correctly: Airline.
His name will forever be Airline.
Another case that grates on me is that of the Middle Eastern
family whose daughter is named something that sounds much like
Shih-THEE-yud. That's fine; name your
kid(s) whatever you want. I did … three
times. However, this is another spelling
error even more serious than Airline's.
This time the paperwork was filled out for Shi-thee-ud but spelled
(without the hyphens) -- Shi-the-ad.
Yup, exactly. SHITHEAD. Her parents had been allowed to register her
for school and even for life as SHIT
HEAD.
There's one name that'll NEVER be written on the class room
board.
Okay, I'm off. Gotta
pay some BILLS.
