Tales from the South, as told by a former welfare dept. worker (me):
1) Mom was attending the health Dept. pre-natal clinic. Meant a lot of time sitting and waiting to be seen. No tv, no table full of magazines. Nothing to do but look at the posters on the walls.
Oh, yeah. The pre-natal clinic was held in the same area as the vd clinic.
All the posters were about vd and what could happen to you. Good scientific stuff, with some graphic illustrations for those who could not understand Latin names for body parts.
Anyhow -- several months later mom has to choose a name for the little princess that managed to survive public health care. Mom admits to not knowing just exactly what it meant, but the word just "sounded so pretty." So she puts an "a" on the end so everybody will know its a girl's name.
We all got together and created a pool about when little Syphillia would gut-cut her mom. I put my money on the first day of kindergarten, when the teacher calls the roll for the first time. I did not win the pool.
2) And who will ever forget the young girl who forever must tell folks that her name is pronounced "poor-shuh" in spite of it not being spelled the "classical" way. Seems her mom had the right idea, but somehow managed to get "P-o-u-l-t-r-y" onto the birth certificate. "Poor-shuh" has a little brother who has to tell everybody that his name really is Hot Dog. It's on his birth certificate. Mom did not screw up spelling it, either. She meant it, cause he was such a fiesty thing while she was carrying him.
3) There was a family of 6 girls. First kid was born at the beginning of Black Pride in the 60's. Mom & Dad were veery much into Black Pride, having changed their whitebread names to ones sounding more African. First girl was named Gotwan, the next Gotwanda, then Gotwandadon, followed by Gotwandadonamon, and so on to the very bitter end. Mom & Dad were very well educated & held down jobs paying well into 6 figures. They just had that strange notion about names for their kids.
stay safe.
skidmark
