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or read his story below:
HERE THERE BE TOMBSTONE MONIKERS
“My mama named me after a dead baby on a tombstone.”
This is one grand entrance I won’t soon forget.
I’m at the shop, plying the book trade, when this rather feisty first-time customer throws open the front door and makes her pronouncement. Her name is Olivia, which she explains is not a common moniker. Her mother did not want her to carry a family name–something unique was in order.
So, while tiptoeing through the tombstones one day, she spied a child’s grave with the name Olivia chiseled thereon. It resonated. It stuck. And right here right now, the second Olivia stands, obviously confused and a little angry about knowing her roots.
“Yep, I’m named after a dead baby.” She manages to grin and frown simultaneously.
All of us humanoids have names. Most of these names are stamped upon us and stick there for a lifetime. Some of these names are deleted by those of us who want to pick our own.
As Pearl Bailey once said, “You can taste a word.”
I like the taste of my name as it escapes my lips. I don’t mind hearing it being tossed back to me. I would not dream of changing it, out of respect for my father and grandfather, who carried the same name.
I don’t mind being Jimmy Three. It sounds a little like a small-time con man’s name. Jimmy Three.
Well, you can call me Jim. My schoolmates always called me James. My friends and family call me Jim. I wouldn’t even mind being called my full name, James Thomas Reed, III, except that it sounds pretentious and too multisyllabic.
And some day, somebody might get cute and carve my name onto a granite tombstone. Then, generations later, when the name Jim isn’t so common anymore, some jokester parent might decide to pluck Jim from the stone and plop it into the lineage of their latest offspring.
Then, thirty years after that, a smiling frowning Jim could be caught telling all within hearing that his folks named him after a dead guy in a cemetery.
Maybe I’ll get to roll over laughing in my six-foot resting place
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed