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10/17/2005 - 5:23 p.m.

CHANGING NAMES

Around here, someone is always changing his or her name. Kat had a good name, a perfectly good name, one that belonged to a beloved great-aunt, but she decided that she preferred her middle name�the one that I generously agreed to so that Rob's family would be represented in her name as well. It's not that I don't like it. I do. It's just not the name I picked. Day is Day to me much of the time but I gave her a different name at birth (although that child will never suddenly switch to her middle name. She dislikes her middle name.) But now Mr. Philately has gone and changed his name. It's too much, I tell you---entirely too much.

No, Mr. Philately has not suddenly taken up a new identity. He just seems to have gotten the insane notion from his children that he ought to be able to control his nickname. He thinks he should be able to pick it. He's learned bad things from the decisions of Kat and Day to ditch their childhood nicknames. And so, it is goodbye to Mr. Philately---the name, not the person. Mr. Philately is out. FogieKnight is in. Mr. Philately is just a name. FogieKnight is an image. Mr. Philately is sedate. FogieKnight swashbuckles (or, more likely, buckles squash. He always did like squash.)

The FogieKnight business started with Kat. Kat just loved to hassle the man with the verbal equivalent of the father-son basketball game in which the payoff for the teen is proving ascension. So Kat began periodically calling her father a fogie. His reading glasses were his "fogie glasses." But the man still had a few tricks up his sleeve (as well as a deep love of Star Wars.) He soon realized that if he gloried in his fogieness, he would have the upperhand in the battle against whats-her-name-anyway.

Thus was born the FogieKnight in whom the fog is strong. Now, every time Kat has a ditzy moment, he can remind her that the fog is also strong in her. As she tries to cover up a momentary lapse in memory or sense, he can refer to her as his "padawan." At first, the FogieKnight stayed at home but, more recently, he has loosed himself in the world of the Internet. He is truly a secret identity.

And so, I am now married to the FogieKnight. May the force be with me.

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