Middle Names

The middle name is kind of worthless don’t you think?  Most people don’t know the middle name of their closest friends.  We give our kids middle names of people in our family who weren’t quite good enough to score the first name honor.  It really seems to be pretty much just symbolic unless you’ve been a bad little boy or you’ve shot the president.  ‘Steven Douglas Johnson you get over here and clean up that mess’ ….’John Wilkes Booth you get over here and clean up that mess’.  Lee Harvey Oswald you get over here and…’  You get the point.

My middle name is Pat. No not Patrick. Just Pat.  And I would be willing to bet that by writing this I just quadrupled the number of people in the world who know my middle name.  So congratulations, and don’t ever call me Pat.  Some middle names are misspelled. I guess when you have a baby you have to name it right away or something so hey, if you’re not a good speller you end up with Rene or Stiev or Theador, or perhaps Jon.  I guess that’s why there are two ways to spell my name, Jon, and the right way.  And what about Christy, Christie, Kristy and Krystee? Ok Krystee just had mean parents.  All her life she’s saying “Um that’s with a Y and two E’s, oh never mind I’ll just write it for you”

Which bring us to Mary Beth, or Marybeth, or Maribeth. What is this name? Is Beth a middle name or just another first name that got stuck to the second part of the first first name? (My grammar corrector is freaking out about ‘first first’ right now. And there it goes again!  Squiggly red lines all around.  “You said this word twice!! You said it TWICE!!!)  Anyway, it must just be another first name because Mary Beth Johnson from my junior high never shot the president and wasn’t a bad little girl…well, she actually was a bad little girl…this one time in the school stairwell she…well that’s another story.  But the point is we still called her all three names: Mary-Beth- Johnson. We didn’t care for her. In fact I never cared for anyone I’ve known named Mary Beth.  But I’d be willing to try and change that if you know a Mary Beth.  Ask her if she’d like to go with me for a long walk on the beach. And ask her if she knows where there is a long beach nearby.  And ask her to bring sunscreen cause man, do I burn!  And can she stop and get some food for us cause I haven’t eaten all day?  But first I’ll have to learn how to walk in flip flops since they don’t get sand stuck in them like sandals do.  But that’s also another story.  I mean, like they are supposed to just stick to your feet magically?  No sir they do not!

So let’s recap:
Middle names should be abolished unless you shoot the president, in which case all assailants will be given the middle name ‘Shooty’.  And the entire population of the earth is hiding from me the secret to keeping flip flops on your feet.  You DO realize with no strap in back there is no way they should stay on your feet right?