What’s in a name

I probably should’ve made this my first post because I hate it when you get on a blog and you can’t figure out who anyone is. If you haven’t already figured it out, my husband and kids aren’t actually named Tenzin, Elfie, and Newt. I mean, I guess that’s possible. We could be hippies. Sure, okay. But we live in a tract home in suburbia and drive a Honda Pilot, so that’s probably not a good guess.

So, the husband. I’m married to my best friend — something people always say. It sounds so cutsie and trite, so I always wonder how often it’s actually true. But we’ve known each other for 25 years, since high school. At this point, I’m sure he’s wishing he hadn’t done such a good job at achieving “friend” status because there’d probably be a lot more sex. Anyway, we youngsters got drunk and stoned together, had lots of deep, teenaged philosophical discussions, and finally fell into mutual “luv” in our mid-twenties. I say mutual because first he liked me, and then I liked him, and then we both liked other people. . .

As huge as this is going to make his already rather large head, he’s earned the name Tenzin while living with me for the past 15 years. I’m kind of a pain in the ass. So I figure he has the patience of at least half the Dalai Lama (currently Tenzin Gyatso). The other day, I was telling a friend how I held myself back from going off on someone for something that absolutely deserved going off on, and she said, “You’ve been taking the high road a lot lately.” And I said, “It’s Tenzin’s fault. I used to be much more confrontational. Now I always take the frickin’ high road.” Which we all know is a complete exaggeration.

Newt is our first born. Actually, that’s not true. The first born is the dog, Uno. If it weren’t for the dog, we wouldn’t have the kid because the dog proved to us that we could love something else “that much.” Newt calls Uno his “Big Brother.” Uno is 10 years old, so don’t even get me started about how this is going to affect the family when he goes to be one with “Dog.”

But back to Newt. Short for Sir Isaac Newton — brilliant and yet, let’s face it, never the cult of personality that was Einstein. You never saw college kids with posters of Newton on their walls. Or magnets and T-shirts with Newton quotes. Anyway, Newt is quite smart. Ironically, like Einstein, he had a speech delay that I think will follow him for the rest of his life. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’ll be the next Barack Obama.

And Elfie, who is Elfie because she looks like she could belong to the clan of Elves in Lord of the Rings. Her ears even seem slightly pointed (although I’m probably making that up). Plus, her real name refers to elves.

And then there’s me, Sunny. Trying my whole life to be an optimist but never actually getting there, often having a slightly dark take on the world, and yet always finding myself embarrassed by the fact that I’ve seen the rainbow. Because things like kittens and rainbows are so uncool.