Change the channel, change your socks, or change the subject, but think twice before changing your intersection with the world.

Most of us are quite content, taking our first first-name all the way to our grave, regardless of how it fits. A first-name, chosen by some love-struck kids barely out of their teens before they ever met us. 

I on the other hand had three first-names before I finished the first grade. Darrel, the name on my birth certificate, was my very first first-name. How I wound up with my third first-name, Skip, is even less confusing than when I acquired my second first-name, but we’re not there yet.

I have an older brother who also goes by Skip; although he’s not my only brother, nor my only older brother. What muddles the befuddled is my other older brother, who’s also, also Skip.

Three brothers wearing each other’s name– wasn’t part of Mama’s master plan. Her entire First Name monomania just sort of got out of hand.

We three brothers began life with normal names. My older brother was Stew– short for Stewart. My older other brother, Bert, was named for Mama’s daddy. That name didn’t sit too well with Bert, so, to keep peace around the house, we just called Bert, Bob.

Sometimes, a person’s first first-name matters little. Another first-name can come along and, no matter how much they duck and weave, it only has to nick them to become their name forever. That’s exactly what befell my two older brothers and me, shortly after Mama determined that our first first-names were underperforming.

The scene of the crime was a nineteen-fifties housing development in Amarillo, Texas. Smack in the middle, where it remains to this day, was the Avondale Elementary Schoolhouse, with its kid-infested playground. The campus was an island oasis in a sea of tract houses. Throughout summer, there was standing-room only on the Schoolhouse playground. The park required reservations to get in, you had to take a number to play in the sandbox, and the swing set had a ten-swing limit. It was bumper-to-bumper going down the slide, the teeter-totter had a six kid minimum– three on each end, and the tether ball pole only had a two-foot rope.

That schoolyard Serengeti teamed with exotic child life. A thousand baby boomers bounced about in that park seven days a week. Herds of boys and gaggles of girls screaming at the top of their lungs. Baseball, football, track and field. Kite-flyers, hoola-hoopers, and stick throwers with their stick chasers. Kids on bikes, trikes, and roller blades. The kid cacophony was compounded by bicycle bells and barking dogs, and when the ice-cream truck came around, a kid-stampede was spawned.

No tougher task any mom could ask, than how to call her kids home from that playground every evening, competing against all the other name-calling moms. Straight-up yelling was as useful as killing flies with a dirty look. A gimmick became an absolute must for being heard above the yodels and the yells, and the din of dinner bells. 

One mom honked until her kids came home or her car died. Another fired a pistol from her front porch. Still another hired a plane to write Come Home across the sky. Bugles, skyrockets, and jungle drums all competed for our attention.   

One evening my mom grew weary of screaming, “Darrel…Stew…Bert– I mean Bob”. She spied a couple of teams scrimmaging on the football field and wondered, What makes each of those kids enter and leave the game? 

Right then and there, a brainstorm knocked my mom clean out of her apron. The very next evening, she put a plan in play which became a complete name changer. No longer would Mama’s kids be known as Darrel, Stew, and Bert– previously Bob. 

Nor were new names installed to fill the void. It was Mama’s blueprint to brand each brother with something far more useful. 

A number.

This is a story sample. You can read the entire story and many more tall tales in my upcoming book:

A Lie is a Lie is a Lie,
Because You’re Not Telling it Right.