Hints and tips for naming a baby

Somewhere in the midst of crib buying, nursery painting and gimmie-gimmie gift registering a more pertinent decision has to be made when expecting a baby, namely what to call the kid. My wife, Elaine, and I know from vicarious experience that this name game can be the source of indecision, frustration and sometimes even chastisement from well-meaning friends and family. A name follows a person through life. Pick the wrong name and you subject your kid to a childhood of finger pointing and playground ridicule. A good choice in names paves the way for memorable introductions and positive first impressions. This being our first, naming a kid is new territory for us. Nevertheless, there are some things we've learned in the process.

People are finicky about names for newborns. I'm no exception. Most know from having been an elementary schooler that a kid with an overly common name will have to go by his first name and last initial in school. I know from having taught elementary schoolers that while the teachers may say to the class "Johnny A" and "Johnny S", what they say to other teachers is "Johnny with the constant cold" and "Johnny with the crazy mom." Johnny's designated identifiers are seldom positive, so unless he's the only Johnny in the class, his commonly sweet name gets amended with a not so sweet characteristic. My rule of thumb is that if the name appears on the Top Ten Baby Names list, it’s out. Regardless of how nice a name Aidan and Dylon might be, I don’t want my child to be one of three Aidans or Dylons in class. We’re also expecting a daughter, so that makes Aidan or Dylon even less likely, but you get the point.

Naming a girl Dylon illustrates another point however. While we laugh at the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue”, sadly there are people who in fact do such cruel things to their children. Let’s face it: when a girl is named Lynn, Leslie, Ariel, Dominique or Madison, she has a name that at worst might be looked at as androgynously trendy. When a boy has one of these names, he has a girl’s name. Remember the playground ridiculers mentioned earlier? He’s their first mark. Worse yet, classmates might rename the game Smear the Queer to Smear Leslie. Girls are generally not bound by the same restrictions, but many sources suggest giving Madison and Dakota girlish middle names just to clarify gender, if in fact they’re girls. If they’re not, well . . .they’re boys who have girls names. See above.

As a language geek, somebody who thinks in fricatives and plosives, I have other qualifications in a name. My last name begins with a B for instance, so I won’t want my daughter’s first name to end with a B. Granted, there aren’t many girls’ names that end in B (Deb is the only one that comes to mind), but Deb Black poses pronunciation problems. Will people hear Deb Black? Or Dehh Black or will they hear Deb Lack?

I also check for anagrams of new babies' names. An anagram is what you get when you rearrange the letters of a word or words. LATES is an anagram of STEAL for instance. My sister- and brother-in-law were at one time considering naming their baby an anagram of FETAL GREMLINS. They opted instead for an anagram of MELTING AFRICAN. My wife and I are considering one of THEREZ BILLY CLAMBAKE. Were we to have been expecting a boy, his anagram would have been BROADMINDED CLAW KICK. I'm not gifted enough to come up with these on my own. Instead I rely on wordsmith.org's anagram server. Even still, this is probably one of my eccentricities better characterized as a disorder.

Regarding the internet, there are several sources for baby names online that parents of yesteryear didn' have access to. It's easy to pull up the popular names, ethnic names, historical names and trendy names. The net is chocked full of people who enjoy nothing more than sharing their choices of names and asking for others' input on names. Often they come up with such jewels as Brayden, Makynzi, Karsyn, Kamaria and Jayln. Half the names these people throw out sound like characters in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. It's enough to make you puke!

Worth checking out though is the baby namer on oxygen.com. Not only will it tell you how high a name ranks in popularity, but it will also give drawbacks or what they call "teaser names" for a name. Gotta love these. Teasers for my name include Kevout, Seven, Kevie Wevie, Revvin' Kevin, Schmevin and Heavy Kevvy. This site is most enlightening. If you're a family member or friend, you can rest assured you will now never hear me call any of you Care Bear, Krusten, Droolia, Mattitude, Kyley Wyote or Philip the gas tank.

Preferences for naming babies vary from person to person. For every rule, there's a kindhearted soul out there whose name doesn't follow that rule. Before I step on too many more peoples' toes, let me just say that while I don't want my kid to have one of the top ten baby names, I've known some wonderful Emilies and Ashleys; there's a nice woman named Kevin who works at my voting poll; Bob Barker and Jeb Bush both could probably care less about the multiple bilabial plosives in their names; and though I've never met Orangello and Lorangelo, I'm sure they're great guys. As for teasing names, kids are going to tease regardless of someone's name. That being said, I'm giving MELTING AFRICAN'S mom fair warning. When I see her at the shower, I'm gonna shout Queenie, Queenie Caroline, Washed Her Hair in Turpentine. That one's just too good to pass up.

I want to pull out my cowlick

Burning inside me is a strong desire to pull out my cowlick. Looking at me, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell I have a cowlick, but I know it's there. Oh yes, it's there. It stands out ever so slightly, leaning defiantly at an abnormal angle against the other well behaved good little hairs. Like a weed in a rose garden it grows seemingly out of sheer spite, mocking the gardener/groomer who debates whether to prune around it or pull it out entirely. I had hoped one of the benefits of chemotherapeutic baldness would be that the cowlick would not grow back. Apparently weedkiller can wipe out both plants and cancer, but not unruly tufts of hair.

There is a scientific name for this. It's called trichotillomania (pronounced puhl' ing owt yoor hehr''). I'm not generally one for psychoanalytic labeling, much less self-imposing such labels, but this is one I can't readily deny. According to healthAtoZ.com (by the way, I strongly encourage you to obtain all pertinent health information from the innerweb) trichotillomania is thrown into a category called impulse control disorders along with things like kleptomania and pyromania. Wow! I feel like I ran a red light and have been thrown in with the serial murderers. I've just pulled out a few wayward hairs and I'm on the same level with thieves and firebugs?

I first acquired this habit when I was nine at which point I gradually pulled out enough hairs to create a bald spot on the top of my head about the size of a half-dollar. My teacher was disgusted by this and referred me to the school counselor because of it. I don't know that she and I were able to reach any remarkable discoveries. The appeal of pulling out my hair soon waned and it grew back. I can't recall why I did this. Some theorize that pulling out one's hair is associated with stress, but how much stress can a nine-year-old really have? Though, come to think of it, there were those times when I had to wait an entire week for the exciting conclusion of Diff'rent Strokes.

Some twenty years later I revisited pulling out my hair, only this time the target was my cowlick. I wanted to believe this was merely for purposes of beautification, but since later attempts to shave out the cowlick with an electric razor just didn't yield the same gratification as wincing and pulling, I can only assume that there is some psychotic reason I do this. Whether shaven or pulled out, extracting my cowlick really resulted in little if any esthetic improvement. Because it was shorter than the rest of my hair, it just stuck out even worse as it grew back. My hairdresser would admonish me each visit saying, "It's gonna grow back the same way." She was right.

Further evidence that this is a neurotic behavior and not just a harmless pastime is found in Dr. Steven Phillipson's paper Hair Pulling a.k.a. Trichotillomania: a simple habit or a complex diagnosis? You see, prior to pulling out hair, I spend several minutes trying to separate out the individual hairs that constitute my cowlick. Sometimes I stare in a mirror and determine that what I think of as my cowlick is actually two cowlicks, one small and one big, seperated one from the other by a few strands of hair that actually go where they're supposed to. At times I'll wrap them around my finger and just pull -- not pull them out, mind you. Just pull. I didn't think much of it until I read this in the good doctor's paper:

Prior to hair pulling, most persons engage in a self-stroking behavior otherwise known as the "grooming" response (i.e.,hair twirling, eyebrow caressing, pubic hair tweaking, etc.) This repetitive action sets the stage for finding the specific hair or clump of hairs that become the target for the future pull.

Yikes! I fit the profile to a T. Like I said, I'm really not into psycho-self-labeling or psycho-anyone-else-labeling for that matter. I'm constantly sickened by people touting their recent diagnoses of OCD, ADD or LMNOP, but even I have to admit there may be something to this. I wonder if the manifestation of the disorder lets up when the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars? In the meantime, I'll have to explore Trich.org and see what I can learn. With any luck I'll find a group of caring and cultish people in front of whom I can someday stand up and proudly announce, "My name is Kevin, and I'm a trichotillomaniac."

Search for interesting blogs yields few results

I recently have begun dedicating a portion of my work day to checking out other people's blogs. This is because until recently I suffered from blogroll envy. You know that sidebar on people's sites where they list the blogs of roughly a quarter of the world's population? Though many people out there have on their sites links to umptine million other bloggers, I only link to a select few. So with the assumption that there must be a slew of enjoyable blogs out there I'm not sharing, and worse yet not reading, I set out on a mission to find them and use them to extend my list of likable blogs.

I started with two local people whose stuff I find funny and witty. Between the two of them they had roughly sixty other blogs listed as affiliates. I clicked them, one by one, to uncover what I expected would be more funny witticisms. Baloney! What I found was a cyber string of blase drivel. Not all drivel was alike of course. Some was political drivel, some sophomoric drivel, and some was just plain vulgar drivel. How sad. What began as a novel way to express one's views via the internet has now become a breeding ground for boring drones, conspiracy theorists, and illiterate nitwits. It reminds me of the cyberfodder people used to send through their email. Remember the Neimann Marcus cookie recipe and all that fill-this-out-and-send-it-to-seventy-friends crap? That's what this is like.

I didn't keep score of the blogs I ran across in my fruitless search, but here's the breakdown. Lots of people write about nothing but their own dull lives. In and of itself, that's not bad. Most all of our lives are dull and reading about someone else's dull life can help satiate some voyeuristic tendencies. But people, when you're writing something you want someone else to read, jazz it up a little. We're not expecting illiteration and double entendres, but why not throw in some sentence variance and maybe the occasional adverb? A guy can only read so many blogs that read IwenttoworkmybossisajerkIneedanewjob before drowning in a puddle of his own drool. I've found more intriguing reading in the Yellow Pages.

Another thing you see a lot of is the political soapbox blog. Much of the stuff found on these blogs is simply rehashed versions of what you hear on talk radio. Each time I stumble across such a site, I have to fight the urge to leave a comment asking if the author has formulated any political opinions of his own. I swear I think most of these people just regurgitatie the same angry poli-rants posted by everyone in their sidebar of supposed noteworthy blogs. The political soapbox blog generally falls into one of two categories, either Bush sucks -- pass it on or Bush rocks -- pass it on. It's like a second-grade game of Telephone.

You know what else you see a lot of in blogdom? Profanity. I'm not offended by it, and sometimes it truly adds to the story. I pride myself on being quite the potty mouth at times, but posting locker room talk just so you can say you put naughty words on the innerwed is just plain stupid. Worse yet is that most of the profane parlance is from people trying to be funny. Vulgarity gets courtesy laughs at best. Most often it just detracts from what you're trying to say. Then again, some use it because they have nothing to say.

My conclusion is that many people are simply whoring out their blogs in the hopes that the affiliated blogger will return the favor resulting in both bloggers getting more hits and thus a slightly more inflated ego. It's like some huge mutual masturbatory cyber aggrandizement. Obviously I'm grateful to anyone who links to my blog, visits my blog, or leaves a comment. After all, I write my blog to advance my plan for world domination share something that people might enjoy reading or possibly rouse a response, but I'm not going to link to someone's blog if I find it overly dull, There are of course some blogs I find worthwhile. My proposed readings are limited to a sibling, a friend, a few locals, a few nonlocals and an admitted schizoid. The one thing these people all have in common is that they write stuff I truly enjoy reading.

If you've got a blog worth reading, I want to know about it.

Wait time in doctor's waiting room tops one hour

If Dante's Inferno were rewritten and adapted to modern times, I am certain one of the circles of Hell would include having to sit endlessly in a doctor's waiting room. I did this twice yesterday. My first visit was to my oncologist for a routine followup exam. The time I routinely spend in his waiting room is without exception far more than I spend in the actual examination room. I don't mean I spend ten minutes in the waiting room and five in the exam room either. I mean I have sat in that waiting room flipping through outdated, dog-eared secondhand magazines for as long as 45 minutes before finally seeing a phlebotomist. That's another thing. With the enthusiasm fellow patients put down last year's copy of the AARP magazine when their name is called, you'd think they were jumping up to be the next contestant on The Price is Right. They're not. They're just getting blood drawn and then sent to an exam room to wait yet again.

I like to sit in view of the receptionist's window. My theory is that I can give her pathetic stares and guilt her into bumping my name up on the list. This seldom works, if ever. The magazine selection at my oncologist's office is limited, so I picked up the three-month old issue of ESPN magazine. Not because I thought I'd find something worth reading in it, but because it was the only thing in reach. I did happen upon a page with scantily clad women made up to look like members of KISS. One of them was missing a tooth. They were - get this - rollerderby queens. I thought that was a sport that went out with the Carter administration and The Partridge Family, but apparently it's back. A Google search even revealed the name of the local team, Atlanta Rollergirls. Note to self: get tickets.

Eventually I made my way into the lab room. This is where someone takes blood from you and records your weight. I always curse myself for wearing what I deem heavy clothes that day. I know it's silly. How many pounds can those cheap Target pants with the expando Fatty McFat wasitband really add to my weight? I'll spare you the number on the scale readout, but let's just say it was high. So high in fact that I had to scarf down two cinnamon rolls today just to alleviate the accompanying anxiety.

One of the phlebotomists I'm used to seeing no longer works there. While in the waiting room, I overheard that she was now working as a school nurse at a local high school. With the remaining phlebotomists I discuss my theory of their former coworker hooking up with a ne'er-do-well high school detentionee and having his love child. This was a joke of course, in that funny-'cause-its-probably-true sort of way. We all shared a laugh at her expense.

These days it seems like exam rooms in the doctor's office are smaller than a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's cell. I find I have to crack the door to ward off claustrophobia. On my recent visit my doctor saw me in no time flat. He told me that because the door was ajar, he couldn't tell whether or not there was a chart in the folder holder. When he rounded the corner to see if a chart was there, we made eye contact and he greeted me with a handshake and a smile. I think it was partially out of a sense of guilt or obligation, much the same way we're forced to converse with an aquaintance who catches us looking at them from across the room, but so what! This helped me get in there and out.

My oncologist is a kind and well-mannered individual. He is one of the few medical practitioners I have ever seen in my 33 years whose touch alone feels truly healing. He volunteers for About.com answering questions on cancer and Hinduism. I enjoy reading his posts almost as much as I do chatting with him during my semi-annual visit. His accent reveals hints of Hindi or Gidjarti, but his writings denote evidence of heavy British schooling. He spells behavior with a superfluous U and occasionally employs Britspeak words like "erstwhile." During my visit we discuss my wife's pregnancy, he feels my testicles and we part ways.

My next doctor's appointment was a routine followup with my urologist a few hours later. I arrived at five minutes before two o'clock to find the door locked and four other people waiting outside. The downside of waiting at the urologist's office is that you suspect you're going to have to give a urine sample so you try and avoid going to the bathroom beforehand. This can sometimes lead to prolonged agony that for many just aggravates the whole reason they're seeing the urologist in the first place. I had a diet soda in hand and probably fifteen minutes time to wait, so I decided to go ahead of time, knowing I'd still be able to go again if they wanted a specimen. When I returned from the men's room, the door was unlocked.

I signed in and sat down, again looking for something to read. At Georgia Urology the reading material is limited to Golf Digest, Atlanta Style and Design, a copy of Children's Bible Stories and some flyers for incontinence and erectile dysfunction. I briefly perused a flyer on the drug Flomax so as to avoid having to make eye contact or idle chitchat with any oldsters with weak bladders. Again, I sat in full view of the receptionist's window and the hallway that leads to the exam rooms.

In the room with me were the four people I saw outside the door and a few stragglers making their way in to the office. One couple stood out to me. She sat next to a stroller, and he was redfaced and noticeably uncomfortable. "What will they do in pre-op?" I heard him ask his wife. She assured him that they would probably brief him on what's going to happen and take his blood. I guessed vasectomy, but there could have been a number of reasons he was there. Whatever his reason, he wasn't volunteering much information. No one does at the urologist's office. At the cancer doctor you might overhear someone talking about their recent surgery or chemotherapy. Strangely, no one shares their tales of not being able to get it up or make it to the bathroom in time.

Sitting a few seats to my right was an older couple. The woman wore a scowl and seldom looked up from her knitting. At one point, a young pregnant woman walked in with a husband and toddler and the older woman mumbled that they were too young to be there. "Young people have problems too," her husband said. The pregnant woman's husband must have had a urology fastpass because he got called soon after getting there. His wife entertained their daughter by pointing out pictures in Atlanta Style and Design. The girl looked to be about two, old enough to say some recognizable words, but the only thing she'd say I could understand was an occasional mama. Then I realized that when the mother was talking to the girl, she was speaking German. Once I discovered that, I did understand the girl when she said "ein Hund" and followed it up with what sounded like doggy. The old spinster wasn't as impressed as I was with a bilingual toddler. She put down her knitting, picked up Children's Bible Stories and handed it to the mom. The proselytized preggers smiled, flipped through a couple pages and went back to pointing out pictures in her magazine.

In the time I sat in that room, I could have done a week's worth of grocery shopping, gone out to lunch and learned to read Chinese. The nurse must have called everyone's name but mine. I watched countless people come in, get called and then leave in the time I was still sitting there. Occasioanlly my doctor emerged with a patient. Once he waved at me and gave a look that seemed to say this waiting's a bitch, ain't it? Finally I went up to the window and asked if I had arrived at the wrong time. I didn't think I had and this was really just a polite way of telling them I'd been waiting and wanted to see a doctor and soon. Sure enough, she informed me, my appointment wasn't at 2:00. It was at 3:00. I pled stupidity and my name was called shortly after.

My urologist is an all around great guy. I know I said virtually the same thing about my oncologist, but it's true. Sure, my urologist doesn't use words like "erstwhile", and his knowledge on Hinduism is probably limited, but he's good at listening and sympathizing. When he found out Elaine was pregnant, he called to congratulate us. When I popped into his office to show off ultrasound pictures, he stopped what he was doing and came out to see them. He may boast a New York ivy league alma mater but his demeanor is down to earth. Furthermore, at the end of my appointment he told me I was one of his favorite patients. What a guy! During my visit we discuss my wife's pregnancy, he feels my testicles and we part ways.

Between the two visits, I spent over an hour and a half just waiting. I know that receiving a diagnosis doesn't happen as quickly as receiving a fast food double cheeseburger. I also know I'm not the only person requiring my doctors' time, and some patients (most in fact) probably have more pressing issues than I. However, can't we come up with some better system to shorten the time we're required to spend in the waiting room? The ennui of it all! And the reading material! I need to order my doctor a subscription to Maxim magazine.

No more cell phone

If the one with the most toys wins, I'm one step closer to the agony of defeat. I recently gave up my cell phone. I know to some youngsters this may seem equally as horrible as selling one's kidney, but for those of us over the age of thirty, we realize that a personal phone number is a luxury that dates back only to the early 2000s. In fact, it wasn't much before that that obtaining a phone in one's own bedroom was viewed a considerable right of passage. Even then, kids who shared a line with other family members often had to interrupt their phone conversations with such coarse phrases as I'm on the phone, or I got it, or I SAID I'm on the phone. Those with older or self-important siblings sometimes might hear What part of "on the phone" don't you understand? Those were the golden years.

As a real estate agent, I felt a constant obligation to answer my ringing cell phone. After all, the caller might be a buyer or a seller, or better yet, a buyer who wanted to buy from a seller. Maybe he was a millionaire and therefore all the more profitable a client. The millionaire never manifested, but I did once get a buyer who ended up buying from a seller. And while I got several profitable calls from real estate clients over the past few years, most of my calls were from non-selling family, friends or the vet who simply wanted to confirm my dog's boarding appointment. Worse yet were the calls I received from friends who called only to pass the time while stuck in traffic. These pointless conversations were sprinkled with the caller firing otherwise unheard insults to fellow motorists, a play-by-play of where they were, and the occasional inquiry as to what I was doing. Have you ever realized that when someone on the phone asks what you're doing, what they mean to ask is what you were doing before they interrupted you with an untimely phone call?

I don't miss the cell phone. I'm usually all about gadgetry. At times I would have a palm pilot, a Realtor key and a cell phone all in one pocket. If I needed to take pictures of something, I'd also carry a digital camera. No more. Stuff equals stress. And stuff that makes you accountable to the rest of the world equals more stress. If people want me, they'll find me. And if they don't find me, the world won't stop turning.

I need to go. Must check email.

I'm a freak; you're a freak

While I was at the bookstore yesterday I noticed a display of the book No Excuses: The True Story of a Congenital Amputee Who Became a Champion in Wrestling and in Life. I asked the clerk behind the counter whether the book I wanted was in stock. It wasn't, so I picked up the autobiography with the long-winded title and wandered through the store leafing through its pages. I wish I could say I was looking for the recipe for championing life, but I wasn't. I didn't care about wrestling either. I just wanted to see pictures of an amputee. Here was an inspirational book with jacket endorsements from Arnold Schwarzenegger and I just picked it up to see if there were photos of a guy with no limbs. A brief skim of the book satiated my curiosities. There were photos -- color glossies no less. I'm only mildly ashamed at my inclination to gawk. After all, if I told you there was a website dedicated to a fingerless fiddler would you click on the link? Go on . . . click it . . . click it.

The parenting book I was looking for is out of print, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon. Before finalizing my order my inexplicable zeal for human anomolies forced me to look for another book I had longed for a few Christmases ago, Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others, My wife had been unable to find it so instead she gave me Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves and Triumphs of Human Oddities. I devoured this book in a few short days. Something on world history I'd bore with after a chapter or two, but give me something on people covered in hair or peoplw with abnormally small heads and I can't put it down. I must not be alone in this admiration for the congenitally eccentric. After all, Michael Jackson makes no bones about his purchase of the Elephant Man's skeleton and Back to the Future's Crispin Glover reportedly collects diseased eyeballs. Furthermore, when I opt to purchase the freaks book from Amazon, I'm immediately asked if I would like to purchase any of another several titles on the same topic, including one entitled So You'd Like To . . . Get Your Freak On. There's a market for this.

In Very Special People, Frederick Drimmer addresses our astonishment with those often labeled as freaks. He says that when we see them we take greater comfort in our own normalcy. Personally I think "freak" is a relative term. Everyone is freakish in someone's view. Not everyone has a conjoined twin or extra limbs of course, but we all possess some attribute or quality that could potentially mark us as freaks. My coffer is minus one family jewel, for instance, though this was the result of surgery, so I don't think that puts me on the same level as someone who was born a uniballer. Regardless, some may consider it freakish.

I'm not saying freak is bad. After all, some of my best friends are freaks. Freak is the new chic. This is the importance of being freakish.

Editorial apology

On the previous entry dated January 4, 2006 I alluded to a fictitious character I referred to as Pat Robertson-Roddam-Clinton Jr. Please note that this comment was made both in jest and before the recent indelicate comments spoken by the Reverend Pat Robertson regarding the untimely stroke of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. I woud like to express my most sincere apologies to the members of the Roddam family, the Clinton family and to anyone who uses the suffix Jr.