March 19, 2008
Finnished
If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't say anything at all...
Seriously, the only thing I have to report these days is that I've scored some wicked-good deals at various flea markets and thrift stores over the past week, and if you think it's annoying when someone starts every conversation with "Look at this shirt! I got it for two dollars! TWO DOLLARS! Touch it!" then you really didn't miss me at all, trust me.
Last night business picked up a bit, though, as instead of sitting home and watching movies we went out for dinner and drinks with some new people--people who I will probably never see again (ergo people I can force to touch the jacket I got for $1.50)--who just happen to be from Finland! They were friends of my friend Teddy (aka the smartest person I know) and after we got over the initial hump of my perverse need to be sincerely congratulated on my acquisition of cheap clothing, we moved on to deeper subjects, which included the Finnish civil war; on which side Finland fought during WWII (hint: with the Nazis!); and the names and policies of UN ambassadors and chairmen over the last several decades. Sharing a table with a Fulbright Scholar will do that to a conversation (historians! bah!), and even though I was smart enough to shout out Butrous-Butrous Ghali at the correct point during the evening, I still couldn't help but mourn the loss of my whip-quick college brain, which was, I swear, full of much more than the crap it contains now (names of lipgloss colors, TLC's programming schedule, celebrity baby names, the cost of every item of clothing in my closet, and, of course, where the commas go).
It's not that I can't follow an intelligent conversation (usually) but that I don't want to, don't have the energy to. Maybe it's that I've been out of academia too long, maybe it's that I lack motivation in the absence of test scores and GPAs, or maybe it's that I've just gotten soft, numb, dumb. I had a great time, but of all the things we talked about, my favorite subjects were (1) wedding planning and (2) confirming the theory that where the weather is cold (e.g., Minnesota, Canada, Finland) the most common pastime is gathering with friends to drink alcohol until such time as someone invents a new "sport," which, in Finland, can include real doozies like the Mosquito Swatting Competition, wherein contestants meet yearly in a particularly muggy bog and wait for the pesky bloodsuckers to land upon their exposed skin, counting each successful swat with a hash mark on an official Mosquito Swatting Competition tablet. One year the winner swatted five hundred mosquitos in fifteen minutes. I could have talked about that all night, but unfortunately the conversation quickly turned to an upcoming conference at Oxford University on which there will be a panel about the history of biological specimens--riveting!--at which point I sunk back into my chair and set my mind to the task of coming up with the name of at least one famous Finn.* Uh...Huckleberry?
Let me tell you something now, and when I do, picture me saying it with a straight face: Huckleberry is Simon's current frontrunner for the middle name of our yet-to-be-conceived son. He is serious. I am seriously disturbed. "But 'Huck' is such a cool, tough name!" he insists. "But you're not naming him 'Huck,' you're naming him 'Huckleberry.' Nobody goes by a shortened form of their middle name." (If he points out that his own family calls him by a shortened form of his middle name, I am ready to point out that my ex's middle name was Jim, just Jim, not James.) My real hangup, though, is not the shortening of a perfectly cromulent name but of the dissonance that will arise from our guaranteed-to-be-super-nerdy child having the monniker of a streetwise rascal. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing sadder than a geek named Percy is a geek named Spike or Butch or Razor or Huck. (Not to mention Huck, Huck, bo-buck, banana fanna, etc.) I suppose there might be a hard-ass gene in me that meets up with a hard-ass gene in him to form a little thuglet of our very own, but the chances are slim. Some babies are born with mohawks; ours will likely be born with a pocket protector.
*Yes, Julia Roberts's son too.
Posted by Leah at March 19, 2008 10:59 AMI feel *so* the same way about Advanced, Serious Conversation. I used to be all into the whole THING of conversation, the references to great books and historical figures and so forth, and now...well, my brain is TIRED at the end of the day. I have to be smart ALL THE TIME at work, and in my off-hours, I need lightness and snark, pretty please. I can hold forth to a limited degree on intelligent topics, but the entire time I am thinking, "I'm going to run out of things to say in 5, 4, 3, 2... CHANGE THE SUBJECT TO AMERICAN IDOL, PLEASE!"
I have a bunch of my old college papers and exam booklets, and every once in a while I bust them out to remind myself how book-smart I used to be, you know?
Also, Huckleberry. Well. I'm not touching that one.
Posted by: Lawyerish at March 20, 2008 11:53 AMI had heard recently that Finland has a serious problem with alcoholism -- apparently the weather is to blame.
Mike and I have a similar argument. He likes the name Tyler. I hate the name Tyler. He tries to persuade me by saying, "You like the name Ty though. You think Ty is a cute nickname." And I say, "But you don't want to name him Ty. You want to name him Tyler." And he doesn't see the disconnect.
A part of me hopes for a girl (for our yet-to-be-created kid) only because we have that name picked and nailed down.
Posted by: She Likes Purple at March 20, 2008 11:53 AMHow bout the name "Buck"? Similar to Huck, but not short for Buckleberry =)
Posted by: snowberrylane at March 20, 2008 12:00 PMContrary to Leah's assertation, I am not serious about Huckleberry.
Just for the record.
-Simon
Posted by: Simon at March 20, 2008 12:01 PMYou sure sounded serious to me...
Posted by: Leah at March 20, 2008 12:07 PMNames names names. It's a fun game. Huckleberry... I can't get past the "Huck Huck Bo Buck......" yeeeaaahhhh. ummmm
Posted by: Elizabeth at March 20, 2008 12:39 PMWould you kill me if I said that I'm sitting here nodding and thinking: "Huck...I dig it"?
Let me know because if you would kill me then I won't say it.
Posted by: Heather B. at March 20, 2008 12:42 PMHeather--I always knew you liked Simon more than you liked me! (See also this!)
Posted by: Leah at March 20, 2008 12:46 PMI have to do the "IT ONLY COST TWOOOOOO DOOOOLAAARS" thing too. Especially when I've received a compliment. Or I will have to say it came from [insert cheap-ass store here] all excited-like.
I think we're just ladies who are easily excited by a good bargain. I am making a concerted effort to just graciously say "Why thank you, this is one of my favorite [shirts, pants, bag, necklace, etc.] without telling the complimenter the history of the sweater I got from Target for all of $3.
Posted by: Jessica at March 20, 2008 01:18 PMAt least he doesn't want your kid's first name to be Huckleberry. Middle names are a freebie. I went to school with a girl whose middle name was Lambert.
Posted by: hills at March 20, 2008 01:20 PMIf it makes you feel any better, I'm still in college (so you'd think I'd be a veritable fountain of useless knowledge) and have trouble carrying on "intelligent" conversations. Most of my friends here in Prague are very artsy and informed and KNOW things...I just kind of sit there and hope they don't notice that I haven't said a word, and am staring off longingly into the distance.
Posted by: Marin at March 20, 2008 01:29 PMI feel the Exact Same Way about enlightened conversation. Sometimes I feel like being out of academia so long has rotted my brain to the point where I can't even write about anything that isn't froofy, and therefore I am very glad I am marrying someone who is capable of writing blog posts about Obama's speech rather than what kind of cake we should have for the damn wedding.
I need to go to grad school.
Posted by: Emily at March 20, 2008 01:52 PMJessica--I call that "compulsive disclosure syndrome." Moose recently wrote about it under the name "bargain basement tourettes." It's an epidemic!
Posted by: Leah at March 20, 2008 02:00 PMMy sister has a friend named Huck. Big, huge, burly biker dude, but the nicest guy you'll ever meet. Don't think anyone ever teased him, though I'm not sure it's his given name.
I work with a bunch of PhDs, and lemme tell you, at the holiday party when the wine is flowing and they get to talking...zzzzzzzzz. I didn't come here to learn anything, just talk to me about the last movie you saw, for fuck's sake!
Posted by: jive turkey at March 20, 2008 02:05 PMThe only Finns I know get really drunk in the afternoon and go to parties without pants. (Pantsless Finns!) Or maybe they were simply hiding their superior intellect so as not to intimidate me. (I was still intimidated. Going to a party without pants takes chutzpah.)
Posted by: Moose at March 20, 2008 03:39 PMActress, Kimberly Williams, named her son William Huckleberry and they call him Huck for short.
Posted by: Sharon at March 20, 2008 05:15 PMActress, Kimberly Williams, named her son William Huckleberry and they call him Huck for short.
Posted by: Sharon at March 20, 2008 05:15 PMActress, Kimberly Williams, named her son William Huckleberry and they call him Huck for short.
Posted by: Sharon at March 20, 2008 05:15 PMSharon--That's pretty crazy. Especially since people have told Simon he looks like Brad Paisley (Huck's pa).
Posted by: Leah at March 20, 2008 06:20 PMAt the risk of being given a dirty virtual look, I kinda like Huck. And I think it could work for a nerdy kid. I mean, remember that kid from Jerry Maguire? He totally could have been a Huck, no?
Posted by: Super-S at March 20, 2008 06:24 PMY'know, I was thinking the EXACT SAME THING about serious conversation just the other night. It made me a little sad to realize that I would rather talk about J.Lo's babies than Game Theory, which certainly was not always the case (and I think I just announced my nerdiness in your comments). I also used to think that Huckleberry would be a superbly awesome name for a boy! There was a super cool, artsy couple who were local celebrities in Minneapolis and they named their son Huckleberry. I wanted to follow in their footsteps before I realized that I couldn't really pull off "impossibly hip" (um, yeah, impossibly hip people don't discuss Game Theory), and therefore had no business naming my non-existent son Huckleberry.
Posted by: Brooke at March 20, 2008 08:30 PMThe name could be worse... my friend is obsessed with the movie, Never Ending Story. She named her son Atreyu. Granted, a few people pick up on it right away and say THAT'S SO COOL! But most of us just think, oh, that poor kid...
Posted by: Nikki at March 21, 2008 09:32 AMHuck is TOTALLY MY BABY NAME! I got it from West Wing when Toby's twins are named Huckleberry and Molly. I like the shortening to Huck but always felt a bit uncomfortable that my future son's formal name would be Huckleberry. At the beginning of every school year the teacher would inevitably call it out during roll call which couldmaybepossibly be embarrassing. Then, I discovered a loophole! I'll name him Charles, which Chuck is a nickname for and which Huck could logically follow on.
Posted by: eileen at March 21, 2008 12:18 PMOoh, where are these thrift store and flea markets you're going to? I LOVE thrift stores and flea markets, and I LOVE boasting about my 75-cent purse. To anyone who will listen.
(PS: I love Huckleberry! No really, I do. I think Simon's onto something.)
Posted by: Nothing But Bonfires at March 21, 2008 04:28 PMNothing exciting--just Goodwill (they had a 50% sale on Monday) and the Ashby flea market (aka Where You Go To Buy Back Things That Were Stolen Out of Your Car).
Posted by: Leah at March 21, 2008 04:34 PM1) I think we are kind of the same person. I've inherited my mom and grandma's disease of "LOOK AT THIS SWEET PILE OF STUFF I SCORED AT THE THRIFT STORE!" Also, I maintain that I've gotten dumber every day I've been out of college. It doesn't bother me enough to make me go back, though. Word of the Day emails keep my vocabulary fancy enough to fool people into believing I'm as smart as I was in college. :)
2) Please, Simon. I don't think you're allowed to live north of the Mason-Dixon line if you name your child Huck.
Posted by: Cate at March 21, 2008 09:38 PMI dunno. I kind of think Huck has a ring to it, too.
Posted by: Kristin at March 23, 2008 01:08 AMOh, crap, I love the name Huckleberry.
Posted by: Lulu at March 24, 2008 07:14 AM
