What About Bob?

Being the Grandfather of ten is a unique experience. Each one has a jillion ideas floating around in their noggins and, oftentimes, it's absolute hilarity.

I have a newly turned five year old grandson. His name is Kingston. It's a family name on his Dad's side dating back to the 1500's in England. His father's middle name is the same. Sometimes, people call him King and at other times, when he's slow to obey, Kingston with emphasis added. The kid is even tempered and has never had a bad day in his life. You will never have to tell him to turn that frown upside down.

His family is moving to Montgomery, Ohio tomorrow. It's a suburb of Cincinnati. The entire group, mom, dad and four kids spent last Saturday and Sunday in their new home.

Last Sunday the Queen and I drove down from Dublin to check out their new digs. While we were there I took Kingston to a nearby park. About five minutes after our arrival King hooked up with two boys a couple of years older than he. They were digging in a sand pile when one of them asked my grandson, "What's your name"? He responded with, "My name is Bob".

Five minutes later his dad arrived and I mentioned his son now had a new name. "Yep", he told me, "It's Bob".

So, here's the story. Two friends of my son and his wife recently gave birth to baby boys. They gave their sons the moniker of Kingston. When my grandson heard about this he got upset because his name had become that of a commoner, so to speak.

In order to feel special he wanted to come up with a name for himself, a seldom used name; one that is rarely given to boys. He wanted a unique name not used by anyone in this hemisphere so he came up with Bob.

Hence, he's going to use the name of Bob forever. His pre-school teacher is going to be quite surprised when the lad who is supposed to be on the rolls, 'Kingston', doesn't show up for school that first day and she's trying to figure out who this Bob kid is. I thought it might be fun to tell the Kingster I'd give him five dollars if he told his new teacher his name was Mohammed.

What the heck. It'd make for a good story and that's why I put out this blog.