fine whine

'Twas a warm day here.
We ate lunch at Panera
and thought about names.

As I was doping my (freshly-brewed) iced tea today with my secret blend of sugar and Equal, a thought struck me. What would be the most foolproof name to give the counter-people to call when the food is ready, I wondered. For some reason "Truman" came to my head, and upon giving it more thought now, I conclude that's it a pretty good one, both for clarity of spelling and pronunciation as well as potential for uniqueness. Moreover it is suitable for both first and last name, and it strikes me as something Jack Reacher would do in the books by Lee Childs (if he hasn't already).

Not one to leave such questions answered so quickly or easily, and looking to steer the dining conversation away from heightened cholesterol and other maladies, I posed it to my wife and parents, and we had a decent discussion about which name would in fact be best, if any.

We were, after all, a table full of Lietzes, not an easy tame to spell nor read. I've relegated myself to giving the name "Mike" instead of my last at restaurants and the like, and I had overheard my dad doing the same for this one. He suggested the use of more esoteric names like Alfred and then moved on to hip-hop nicknames ("P. Diddy, party of 1, your table is ready"). My mom chimed in with some more nicknames, and Jessica took the ball and ran with the whole idea of using stereotypically ethnic names for us WASP types.

A further suggestion, one that merits some further consideration, was the use of common object names, such as "houseboat" and "stick" and so on. This may well have been the sort of thinking that lead to the naming of heavies in Neil Gaiman's fantastic American gods, but one can never be too sure.

But "houseboat" has a nice ring to it. A lot better one than "Long feet", which could well be my Native American name, would have.