Thursday, February 2, 2023
I met a kindergartner named Maverick. He is way ahead of the game! I think Maverick is going to be a popular name after the Top Gun movie last year. I already know a baby Maverick. Anyway, he was absolutely charming. I love how straight-forward and sincere 5-year-olds are. We were working on writing a sentence together and he was telling me about the trouble with the letter A (it’s super hard to make an A right) (a small a, actually. The circle is fine, but then which side of it do you put the stick is tricky) (d is okay, so we talked about making a short stick d for an a. Maverick was intrigued with this idea. I wonder if some day he will be a 50-year-old man thinking short stick d) when I called him Wyatt. Apparently. I know because his entire face turned into a smile and he asked, “Did you call me Wyatt?” I looked into those enormous brown eyes staring straight into my brain and answered honestly, “I have no idea.” His best friend’s name is Wyatt and he looooooves Wyatt and it was SO GREAT that I called him Wyatt because to BE Wyatt would be the best thing that could possibly happen to him. Such a win for both of us! So, I guess Wyatt and Maverick are the same name now. I have several names that I interchange. Obviously, Kyle and Tyler. It makes total sense because they both have a Y in them, and I can switch from calling a Kyle to Tyler and back 4 or 5 times in a single class period and never once notice. I recently listened to an audiobook in which there were MANY characters, but two central to the plot were Frida and Florence. They had run away and people were looking for them, so if the action wasn’t directly reporting what they were doing, the folks chasing them were talking/thinking about them. I could not keep them straight, and if only one was there, I kept wondering where Josephine was. It took me half of the book and a serious conversation with myself to be convinced that there was no Josephine. I have accepted that there is a small connection somewhere in my head that just swizzles names. It swizzles Bs and Ps, too. I can usually get initial Bs and Ps in writing, but put one in the middle of a word and it’s a stretch. It (probably) took me about six years of concentrated effort to learn to spell probably. Packback just stops me cold. I have to do a kindergarten pronunciation (Hi Maverick!) (Okay. I just stopped cold. I spelled backpack wrong to start this bit. I totally didn’t know I did it until I went back to imitate kindergarten pronunciation BBBBBackPPPPack and saw it was wrong. Bs and Ps, man. They are SO hard) (Hi Maverick!)
One last thought about Maverick… He was telling me that there is another Maverick in nexter grade. And when he (this current kindergartner Maverick) is in nexter grade there will still be another Maverick in nexter grade.
Nexter grade is my new favorite thing.
When I was in college my roommate was Jan. (I’m Jean.) we were together so much that people would just say, “Hi, Jan and Jean.” Then, the rare times we were together, people weren’t sure which one we were, so they would say, “Hi, Jean. Did I get that right?”
So for four years, the names Jan and Jean were as interchangeable as Kyle and Tyler or Maverick and Wyatt.🙃
I like Jean and Jan – it’s fun to say.