So where does that leave my children and my parenting? I'm still trying to figure that one out. In the meantime, I thought it quite apt that on this Valentine's Day, my adorable youngest also disbelieves in the holiday, hence his class valentine box adorned with absolutely NOTHING but red paper taped all around and his first name. And for those of you who know, you are correct: He has deliberately misspelled his own name.
So triumphantly horrifying is the reality of what I've warned you all happens when you get creative with your kid's name. It comes back to bite you on the ass.
How did the Queen find herself in this predicament? While I lay in the aftereffects of a terribly painful labor and its subsequent C-section surgery, in my agony and new surge of hormones both unholy and unescapable, my dear, dear husband (who is King Of All Things To Never, Ever Do In The Delivery Room While Your Wife Is Giving Birth To Your Child) cornered me with the decision we'd been putting off for 9 months (or at least 4-1/2 once we found that it was another boy): What to name him. Remembering that Jay had been kicking most of MY suggestions to the curb for several months, and realizing that this was ANOTHER boy, from which the well of names both pleasing to me and not likely to cause the Aforementioned Playground Ass Kicking, was running very, very dry, in a narcotic haze I gave in......with one exception. When Jay wasn't looking (probably eating his Big Mac - true story), I filled out the birth certificate myself, spelling his name with an E instead of an O, forever having my own personal stamp on an otherwise halfway worthy name. In fact, when Jay returned from the records room after having to sign his own name (and most certainly after another Big Mac), he told me, "They screwed up and put an E at the end." I gave a maniacal laugh (that's not true; I could barely even move my face). I said, "I did it that way. I don't want our kid to remind me of Brandon Walsh of 90210, the worst case of Short-Man Syndrome since Tom Cruise." I felt weakly triumphant that my miniscule adjustment would be just that little je ne sai quois that my #3 boy was gonna need in life.
So my reward? My son, in his current phase of not wanting to stand out, be it by wearing his glasses or by being noticed for his Beautiful Mind brilliance or even for just being cuter than shit, has begun defiling his own schoolwork and property with that damn O at the end of his name, declaring that the E is stupid and his friends don't ever spell it right. I understand for him the need is to NOT be different, but I have to agree with my #2 (who is more than happy to be as different from anyone as he possibly can be), who respectfully pointed out, "Don't you realize all your friends are gonna think you're retarded 'cuz you can't spell your own name right??"
That's the one I'm now putting all my money on.
