One day last week, when I picked Alphie up from school, I was greeted by the grinning face of one of her teachers with a story to tell me. Alphie’s teacher told me that they had asked her what her new baby’s name was going to be.
This led to a momentary flash of fear, followed by a slow motion replay of various names we may have discussed, in jest, that might be construed as “not something a four year old should be talking about”.
After all, for the first four months of gestation, Bettie was known as “Blob”.
By way of example, a week or so ago Alphie returned home from school with the name “Pentical” as a leading contender. After reassuring her that Pentical was a perfectly reasonable name, Alphie and Angie tried to find it in the “100,000 things you would never name your child” book. The closest we found was “Quintilla”, which is Latin for “Fifth child”.
And then there was the discussion of names with a Texan flare, into which I proposed “Galveston”. When Angie countered, with a touch of sarcasm “How bad could that childhood be?”, I pointed out that the worst case scenario is that she would be hit by a hurricane every two years.
And then there is the fact that I love the name “Hildegarde”. I know that it is not a battle I can win, but I sally forth to propose it every time I have the chance. I love the nickname “Hilddie” (possibly the strongest selling point), and I think it is one of the best under-rated names available to prospective parents. Angie continues to hold to the position that I would not love to pay for the therapy of a daughter named Hildegarde, and I have to, reluctantly, agree.
So would a teacher think that Alphie was joking if she told her that the baby’s name was Hildegarde? Would they have thought that was funniest joke of the day, thus crushing my daughters view that her father is truly one of the great minds of this century?
And so I stood in Alphie’s classroom filled with chairs made for extremely little people, talking to a teacher across a table that does not even reach my knees when I am sitting down. I could only hope that things we had said in the rather regular environment of our house had either not been repeated in the rounded corner environment designed for children, or that the translation would be more exact than I can comfortably expect from a four year old.
The teacher, probably interpreting my hesitation as an actual attempt to think of a name, told me that our dear, sweet child had responded gleefully:
Alphie, with two “L”s.
