What’s in a name, you ask? My parents named me Nina Joann Foreman when I was born. Five days later, they came to their senses, hurried to the courthouse, and changed it to the one it they had originally chosen during the entire seven-months & one-week of my mother’s pregnancy.
I am forever grateful. Not that I don’t like the sweet, romantic sound of Nina. But the Joann part? No, it’s just not me. So, why do people call me Joann? It gets on my nerves to no end when they drop that “A” off the end, like they just couldn’t read quite that far, or they got tired of pronouncing syllables all of a sudden. Three. Simple. Syllables. Is it too much to ask that Joanna be pronounced correctly? Maybe. We all like the sound of our own name, according to recent studies, and we cringe inside when it gets botched don’t we?
Or maybe you go along with the motto: Call me anything, but just call me. And I’ll admit: maybe I am just a little too particular. I suspect the majority of you have experienced an unusual pronunciation of your name from time to time.
Drop me an email if you have. If you haven’t, I’ll lay a wager your given name is voiced with only one syllable. Am I right? |
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No, it’s not the country-road mailbox itself that irritates me; the mailbox owner, on the other hand, drives me mad. I live on a rural road, and from the time I exit the Interstate, there is a precise distance of three treacherous miles before I safely reach my own driveway.
Why treacherous, you ask? Could it be the steep hills and winding curves, or the yellow school buses behind which (at every third house) I must stop? How about the oncoming driver who hugs the middle of the road in rush hour, cell phone glued to her ear? (HANG UP AND DRIVE!)
Or the deer prancing merrily from one side of the road to the other at their whim, or those bushy-tailed rodents, otherwise known as squirrels, leaping out of the woods right as I approach? The neighbor who blindly drives his riding mower right onto the blacktop to make his turns? Joggers, cyclists, riders on horseback? Okay, you get the picture.
Country roads are like video games. The player maneuvers his vehicle around each and every obstacle thrown before him to make it to the next level. So explain to me why the neighbors on our three-mile stretch of back road find it necessary to remain in their own vehicle while checking their mailbox? Can’t they simply pull into their driveway, exit the vehicle and walk a few steps to fetch their post? It’s not like it’s pouring rain, or we’re in a blizzard. No, they do it in the spring and summer, times when a little stroll could be really fun and energizing.
Maybe they’re too old and physically challenged to walk those few steps from the car to the mailbox, you say? You may have something there. Is it possible they shouldn’t even be driving in the first place? Think about this: When you pull over alongside your mailbox at the side of the road, lean across the car and reach out to get your mail or your newspaper you’re endangering anyone coming from behind. And you’re putting your own self in hazard’s way, too. Getting hit in the rear is no picnic.
Just call me the Mail Box Police.
I expect I will, someday, plow right into that big, white Cadillac I see quite often along my road. I’ll undoubtedly get sued by a big ole fat, smiley face, ambulance-chasing lawyer.
In video game terminology—Game Over.
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