The Names They Almost Had

Gotta blog for you: http://andzenwhat.blogspot.com/

This is from an email acquaintance of mine who has a more complicated and therefore more interesting family than most: six kids, and working toward a seventh. The kids are from four different countries.

She seems to have a concern that I share: Do you give out your kids’ real names on the internet, where any wacko can read them? My solution so far has been to refer mostly to “my three-year-old" or “my oldest child." Her solution is to give the kids numbers and to tell stories about “One" or “Five."

I’m probably being overly paranoid here. After all, hardly anyone reads this, and how often do you hear about the kids of even well-read authors being kidnapped and tortured? Bill Bryson has kids, and I’ve never heard of them being kidnapped. Although, come to think of it, he doesn’t refer to them by name in his books, so maybe I’m on the right track here.

Anyway, I’ve been afraid that if I referred to little Ashley (not her real name) by her real name, aliens would come and snatch her off the face of the earth. So here’s a solution: I’ll refer to the kids by the names they almost had.

Every kid has a name he/she almost had. Either it’s the name Mom wanted and Dad won, or the name Dad wanted and Mom won, or the name Grandma wanted but she moved to Florida right before the kid was born and Mom and Dad no longer felt obligated.

Near as I can remember, here are our kids’almost-names (keeping the same sexual orientation; that is, excluding the names they would have had if they’d been the other sex):

17-year-old girl (bio, so with us from birth): Heck, it was a long time ago and I can't remember. How about Tillie? I’ve always liked that one.

16-year-old boy (bio): Alan (his great-grandfather’s middle name)

15-year-old boy (from Haiti, with us almost three years): He changed his own name when he got here. He now goes by his birthmother’s last name. How about we call him Angelo?

9-year-old girl (bio): Amelia

4-year-old girl (bio): Lillian, or Lillie

3-year-old girl (from Haiti, with us since her second birthday): Francie, a version of her birthmother’s last name

Now all I have to do is keep this straight, which I probably won’t, so I may end up using various names. Some of them may even be the kids’ real names.

Speaking of names: my grandmother, a frequently cranky woman who acted as if life dealt her a lousy hand and we were all at least partially responsible, claimed that she didn’t get to name her three kids herself. Grandma was a lot younger than Grandpa (by about twenty years!) and the happy couple lived with Grandpa’s old maid sister and widowed mother. The sister, named Mamie (her real name) got to name Grandma’s babies, I suppose because Mamie would never have any of her own. Grandpa insisted on it.

I feel sorry for Grandma. At the same time, I kinda wish she’d smacked Mamie upside the head and named her own kids so she wouldn’t have to complain about it for the next sixty years.