Babyhood (9780062098788) by Paul Reiser

example, how could anyone say no to a person named Bumpy? Think about it: You just got home, you had a terrible day, you don’t want to see anybody, talk to anybody, think about anybody . . . The doorbell rings.
    â€œAh, geez . . . Who is it? ”
    â€œIt’s me —Bumpy.”
    Beat.
    â€œOkay, come on in.”
    You’re going to let the guy in.
    â€œI hope you’re by yourself.”
    â€œWell, I brought my cousin, Blinky. ”
    â€œOhhh . . . all right, both of you, come on in . . . but only for a little while.”
    S ome people don’t agonize at all about finding the perfect name. They simply give the kid their name.
    â€œHe’ll be me , but Me Junior. To be followed by Me the Third, and his son, Me the Fourth.”
    Certainly moves things along. Of course, if you’re really pressed for time, do what heavyweight champ George Foreman did—name all of his kids George Foreman. God bless him, a great fighter, a fine humanitarian—not, apparently, the most creative in the naming department. An entire family named George Foreman. It’s not like they’re of successive generations, overlapping only here and there for a few years . . . No, this is almost half a dozen guys, with the exact same name, all living in the same house.
    â€œThis is my son George Foreman, his younger brother George Foreman . . . this one here is five and a half, say hello to George Foreman, and the little ones . . . where are they? . . . George Foreman? George Foreman? Come over here . . . okay, now, say hello, this is George Foreman and George Foreman . . . Why don’t you all sit down on the couch over there—the couch, interestingly enough, I call George Foreman.”
    For others, the task of naming is simplified by family mandates. There are people to be honored and remembered.
    â€œThe child will be named after his grandfather.” Or, “She will take her mother’s surname, and it shall be as her own . . . And they shall go forth unto themselves, with their beasts and their grains, and into the desert shall they sojourn.” (I’m sorry, I just saw The Ten Commandments on TV and frankly, I enjoy talking like that.)
    In our case, we knew we wanted to name our child after my father. We didn’t want to use the exact same name, but something beginning with the same letter. We had plenty of girls’ names we liked, but nothing for a boy. Of course, when our son came out a boy (as almost all sons do) we were stuck. So we decided instead to honor my father’s name by making it our son’s middle name—which unfortunately has, to some, the tainted veneer of “second place.” Middle names are kind of like vice presidents: It’s a fine distinction and certainly an honor, but you’re never not aware that someone else got the real job.
    Parents often give middle names just so that later, when they’re yelling at the kid, they can drag it out.
    â€œHenry David Thoreau, you come in here this instant!”
    It gives them something extra to sink their teeth into.
    And a lot of people have middle names but you never know it. You can be friends with someone for years without ever once hearing their middle name. It becomes an area of unspoken intimacy, to be shared with only the select few.
    If, however, you assassinate someone, your middle name is all over the place. Once you shoot a famous person, not only do you go to jail and sit alone hungering for a forgiveness that eludes you your whole life, but on top of that, your middle name, whether you like it or not, gets publicly and permanently cemented right between your first and last name. They just run those puppies together like Sonny-and-Cher. There’s no way you can undo something like that.
    But because of the potential anonymity enjoyed by middle names, they also represent opportunities for Name Givers to safely