Have you ever asked yourself "What's in a name"?  Names and how they change was a topic of discussion at a recent Clarence1973 Night Out.  Take 'The New TGIF' for example.  This is a name we hijacked from Budd Bailey, modified it a little and now claim it for the Class of 1973.  The TGIF has certainly changed from early in the 1970's... although some would argue that change does not necessarily equate improvement...

Anyway, back to names.  A while back I was out playing golf with Tom Herberger and his younger (but not smaller) brother Mark, whom I worked with at the time.  As we're playing along, Tom 'finally' had a decent hit, so his brother Mark commented, "Nice hit Herb."

Now I thought that was nice.  First of all it was the brotherly camaraderie.  Second, I thought how nice it was that he called him "Herb", rather than Tom. Sort of a nickname.  It occurred to me that I should have a nice nickname for my brother... something other than 'knucklehead'.

As I was thinking about all of this, Mark ambled out of the golf cart and knocked the crap out of his ball... a good hit in the parlance of golf.  Mark is a pretty good size guy, so expecting that he should be driving the ball far, his brother gave him a low-keyed compliment... "Nice hit Herb."

"Herb"?  Being polite, I figured I must have misunderstood.  I thought Tom was "Herb".  It was still early and I wasn't nursing a beer yet, but I was pretty sure Mark had referred to Tom as "Herb".  A few minutes later the conversations became surreal when I overheard, "Hey Herb, did you see my ball?"  And the reply was, "Yeah, it's right over here, Herb." Then I found out that there is a younger brother, Pete, that they also call "Herb".  That is when I really started drinking.

In my family we do not have anything as complicated as the "Herbs".  We call my brother Shawn, "Shawn". Everyone calls me Tim. Other than my mother, I have only been called Timothy one time.  A State Trooper stopped me for speeding on Salt Road.  As he stood there looking at my license he simply asked, "Timothy Porter?"  Heck, he had the license, and my picture was on it, so I warily answered, "Yes."  Then he proceeded to lecturing me, as "Mr. Porter", about the dangers of speeding... and then he let me go.

Speaking of my mother, I always call her Mom... but sometimes I call he "Ma".  I got into that habit from hanging around with Bob Schoenthal back in high school.  Bob always called his parents Ma and Pa.  In the innocence of youth, I always referred to his parents as Mr. or Mrs Schoenthal. Just as my mother calls me Timothy, Mrs. Schoenthal seemed to refer to Bob as "Robert", especially when she'd just caught us doing something we were not supposed to be doing.  My kids names are Shawn and Monica... we call them Shawn and Monica....

Some of my coworkers call their mothers-in-law by their first name.  I can't imagine stopping by and saying "Hi, Lois" to my mother-in-law.  She scares me.  I always lose when we get into stare-down contests... like when she 'guilts' me into doing something.  The one time I disagreed with her, my brothers-in-law looked at me like I'd grown a third eye... and then slowly backed away, physically distancing themselves from me. It felt like the temperature in the room dropped 20 degrees and I could see my breath.... Oh, yeah.  She called me Timothy that day also.  I always call her Mom.

When you have a moment, think about names.  Has your name 'changed' over the years?  How about your friends? Then consider why the change occurred.  Other than Herb, I guess that pretty much everyone's name is the same as it was in 1973.  TGIF has definitely changed. Unless we can convince Budd to pick up the load again, you're going to have to continue to suffer through ramblin' essays about nothin'.