What’s in a name? Nothing, unless it’s Mr. Mmnbbellgdmmnrwal
By Burton W. Cole
For that Sunday evening singspiration service it was my duty to stand on the platform and ask church congregants for their choices.
As the mind likes to do when in front of witnesses, mine went to sleep. I couldn’t remember anyone’s names.
“Brennan!”
Dustin didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up. Probably because his name wasn’t Brennan.
Rattled, I raised my voice. And added the names of all the rest of his siblings: “BrennanShaneAshley! I mean, Shane… Aw, let’s skip to, um, Mmnbbellgdmmnrwal in the next row.”
I am lousy with names. But my mumbling is getting better.
A good mumbler can garble a few syllables in such a way that a person thinks he heard a snatch of his name in there somewhere and answers. And is quite happy that you haven’t forgotten him.
Had I mumbled, Dustin likely would have looked up, puzzled, noticed that I was pointing straight at him with my eyes and answered immediately. And he’d have though it was his fault for not paying close enough attention.
That’s the magic of mumbling.
Mom was not a mumbler. She suffered from a malady known to medical science as Flustered Parents Syndrome.
Flustered Parents Syndrome is a common disease that crops up in most families at one time or another. As kids, we took great delight in trying to cause it daily in our household daily.
The trick was to get Mom so flustered that when she yelled, she’d splutter right down the list of all four of us, smashing our names together like a foreign embassy roll call: “BurtonTimDanMartha!” Total victory was when we got her to yell, “BurtonTimDanMarthaCubby!” Cubby was our beagle.
That made her so exasperated that she’d kick the lot of us outside. Which was what we wanted in the first place instead of doing dishes or excavating our rooms or any other chores she’d been about to assign. Although, Cubby loved volunteering to “wash” dishes.
What made us kids cringe was hearing our middle names. We weren’t going outside then. Not for a long time.
The shrill cries of “Burton WILLIAM!” was the reason no one can actually remember seeing me between September 1963 and May 1965. (Cubby didn’t have a middle name, probably because as such a good boy, he didn’t need one.)
I thought having only two children myself would prevent Flustered Parents Syndrome from attacking me. However, there is an inherent something in parents that needs flusterdom. If we don’t have enough names for proper confusion, we find them.
That is why at family gatherings, I call my sister, Martha, and my daughter, Melissa, by each other’s names, especially in the case of emergencies. The kitchen will burn down before I can get the right one to turn off the burner.
For my son, Joshua, I was worse. To his delight, I mixed him up with the dog, Jordy.
At least as an adult, I no longer dread hearing my middle name. For one thing, Mom lives almost an hour and a half away. But mostly it’s because the name I fear now is “Mister.”
“A pleasant evening to you, Mr. Cole. I’m sure you can’t live without our latest product ...” “Happy afternoon, Mr. Cole. About the results of your bloodwork...” “What a great day, Mr. Cole! Say, about your account ...”
Why is it that the worst news is delivered by people wishing you the best?
The next time I get one of those calls, I’ll reply, “Top of the morning right back at you, um, Mmnbbellgdmmnrwal. This is Brennan.”
Mumble at Mr. Mmnbbellgdmmnrwal at burton.w.cole@gmail.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or at www.burtonwcole.com.