a jake is a jake is a jake

There are three solid things that I learned in life. Thing one is that sixteen may not be the best time to give a child permission to operate heavy machinery, eighteen is really not the best time to chose your lifelong career path, and thing three is that pregnancy hormones do terrible things to your brain and pregnancy is SO not the time to chose your child's name. Before I pass on my book of 25,000+ Baby Names (which by the way has the world's ugliest baby on the cover and it gave me terrible nightmares about the potentially hideous spawn that was growing inside me. Check the link only if you are not pregnant and not eating) I thought I should thumb through to see what was starred, circled, and earmarked for baby labeling.

Reid, Owen, Nicholas, Matthew, Jeremy, Evan, Eric, Drew, Cameron, Benjamin, and Alexander were all starred. I remember really liking Jack, James, and Daniel but we already have our shares of people called that in our families so they were vetoed. Notice there is no Jacob on the list. Notice that I thumb through books from back to front. I do the same with magazines. There has to be some sort of DSM diagnosis that explains that.

We didn't give much thought to the name until about five months into pregnancy (lazy!) because I was certain that my baby would die anyway (crazy!) that I wasn't really pregnant in the first place (whack job!) and I didn't see the point of picking out names before then (apathetic!). For a girl we liked Cecilia and Sophia, middle name probably would have been Rose. Now I think those names sound kind of skanky, but whatevs. Maybe my daughter would have been skanky anyway so it wouldn't have mattered. Who knows?

I went to school with a girl named Bambi. She was a little bit older than I was. I wonder what she's doing now? It's gotta be hard to keep a girl named Bambi off the poles I'd imagine. I also knew a girl named Fawnfeather and I think of her every damned day of my life, wondering what the hell a girl named Fawnfeather does for a living.

Oh look! She is doing well for herself! And she got out of crappy Pennsylvania! God I love Google. I think I'm going to dig out my yearbook this weekend and Google everyone.

Now that I'm rambling, I'll tell you that we were talking about weird names for white people at work the other day/week/month/year (I'm really bad with the time-space continuthing), and I mentioned that there was a boy named Farman that I grew up with who was the strangest little boy in all the land. No one believed me, so I Googled him and found that he is the strangest man in all the land. The site that used to come up for him is no longer in existence, probably seized by the US Govt in connection with a murder plot.

My parents almost named me Tina Marie. Puke. Talk about having a hard time keeping someone off the poles. I would have been swinging topless from the rafters with that name. I was originally Laura but because it was the seventies and my parents thought they were progressive they changed it after I was born. So now all my baby stuff says Laura and I have two birth certificates. I think they were going to name me Neely Laura but went with the other way around. I probably would have been teased with jokes about getting on my knees if my name was Neely, but now I like it better. Besides, if I had a nickle for every time someone called me Lora Whora I could take us out to lunch. At The Palm.
I think they had the name Charles in the works for my brother who ended up being called Brian Daniel. I can't imagine that Dave's parents even considered naming Dave anything other than Dave because they are strong believers in the whole Junior thing. We never considered naming Jake, Dave because we are strong haters of the whole Junior thing. And by we, I mean mostly I. I don't get why anyone thinks that they are so great that they should name their brat after themselves. Dave's middle name is Anthony btw, and I love to tease him about that like this. Youtube is blocked here at work so I'm only guessing at that clip, but I think it's the one where Jerry says "Hey, Tony! Hey, hey, hey, Tony". I'm laughing in my head right now just thinking about it.

What was your name supposed to be? Answer that for awhile because I have to go and get some coffee. I haven't had any yet and I kinda have a hunch that this post doesn't make much sense because I'm not very coherent unless my Blood Caffeine Level is .15.

It's really hard to be me.