Friday, February 10, 2012

The Tale Of tommy

Apparently my kids have issues with spelling their names.

Most of my readers know how Natalie spells her name Na. She knows how to spell the entire thing; she just claims that she gets tired after the A.

Sometimes she upgrades to Nat:



And I do NOT want that to stick. When we decided to name her Natalie, my fear was that her friends would start calling her Nat or Natty and I’m sorry, she’s a girl, not a bug.

And then there’s Tommy.

I noticed that he doesn’t bother with capitalization:



This is how he signs his name on everything.

“So Tommy,” I asked the other night. “Are you pulling an e. e. cummings?”

Tommy blinked at me in confusion.

“He’s a guy who didn’t bother with capitalization or punctuation. He’d fit in with most of the people on Facebook.”

I didn’t even get a SMILE from Tommy on that one. He simply gaped at me.

“You do know that the T is supposed to be capitalized, right?” I mean, the kid was in fourth grade. They learned that tidbit in Kindergarten.

Tommy shrugged. “I know. I prefer the lower case T. My teachers don’t say anything.”

“Well. Okay, e. e. cummings,” I relented. “But if a teacher ever starts to say anything, write your name properly. She or he could start to dock points. My French teacher, who was a total crank and gimlet, would have.”

Tommy didn’t even ask what a gimlet was. He simply wandered upstairs.

“Okay tommy!” I called to his retreating back. “It was nice talking to you, too!”

What’s next?

Will Natalie start signing her name Nata? Perhaps by the fourth grade she’ll finally decide that it’s not so strenuous to write the entire thing. I mean, it could have been worse.

If we were Southern, her name might have been Stephanie Elizabeth.

20 comments:

  1. hahha my maiden name was Stephanie with a {no lie} super long ass last name. no wonder I abbreviate everything ;)

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  2. Funny what kids will get in their heads right?

    I laughed at the last line because, although we are not southern, my name is Stephanie Elizabeth and thank God my last name has always been on the shorter side because filling in government forms bites already!! Would be really bad if I has some crazy long last name.

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  3. Hahaha! I have a 2-year-old Thomas and I'm contemplating just letting him go by T to keep things simple :) And the ee cummings on Facebook thing? Genius. I'll be laughing about that one all day!

    Stopping by from SITS,
    Tori
    http://torinelson.wordpress.com

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  4. That's funny! My Jakes has a problem with using Capitals too.

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  5. The fact that he said 'I prefer the lower case' rather than saying 'I like it better that way' makes me feel like he'll be okay! He's a smart kid!

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  6. our Jr. High science teacher was a stickler for crossing your "t's" and dotting your "i's". I kid you not, he would take a point off for each mistake

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  7. OH, now I have to upgrade my comments to talk about Nat. By the time she is a teenager she will probably want you to call her Cheryl.

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  8. Oh, this made me laugh. My son is named Nicolas. Nicolas, not Nick or Nicky and I insisted all the relatives called him by his full name. Then he started school, was in a class with a "Nick" and quickly figured out it was a short (ie lazy) way to spell Nicolas and would write "Nick" on all his school work. Of course,the teacher started calling him Nick, his classmates copied her, and it just spread from there. When his sister and dad started calling him Nick too, I knew it was a lost cause.

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  9. Thanks for visiting me! I'm following you back now :) (how the heck did you get over 1800 followers!?! what is your secret?)

    So, in elementary school I knew a girl named Stephanie but she would get all lazy and shorten her name... to Staff! Ah yep, that was confusing for our teachers! Your kids are still doing way better than her haha!

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  10. I almost hate to tell you that I had a friend named Natalie in high school...we called her Nasty Nat; she loved it. Not because she was nasty or a (really) bad girl, just because it was funny (well....it was funny then - now, not so much!).

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  11. Hey. Don't worry. As long as Natalie keeps adding a letter to her name each year, she's doing fine. 'Course should she continue to add letters.....you may just have to settle for calling her Nat.

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  12. I am sure Natalie will soon realize the beauty of her name and will not want to go by a bugs name. They will outgrow this funny stage and then you will miss it, that's how it always works.

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  13. Haha that's awesome. At least neither of them wants to change their names. I went through a phase where I HATED My name.

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  14. Personally, I kinda like Na ;) LOL!! Then again, my name was such a huge pain to write out when I was a kid and I had two extra letters on your daughter!

    Thanks so much for reading and commenting on my post over at Shell's place. It meant so much! Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

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  15. LOL...my name is Misty. I hate when people call me Missy or Mitzy. Really?? Or I get "is that your real name". Ummm yes, Misty is a REAL name.

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  16. For a long time...like preK-2nd or 3rd grade no one bothered to correct me that the capital letter "E" only had 3 horizontal lines. I would just put as many as I wanted. Then somewhere in high school when we had to use cursive and I had to start signing my name on everything, I started signing my name with a lowercase "e" because I thought capital cursive "E" was ugly. It stuck. And now I've started signing things "em" instead of "Emily".

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  17. I hate when people call our sweet Natalie Nat the Brat. She likes to go by Tillie but I just love the name Natalie.

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  18. e.e. cummings' poems are amazing (well, the ones I understand, anyway...).

    I like Natalie's self-imposed nicknames. Very cute!

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  19. one time my daughter wrote an entire paper backwards..i panicked thinking she had a learning disability...she is now in her 3rd yr of college as an engineering student..go figure!!

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  20. But he knows it should be a cap so that's good, right?

    LisaDay

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