NAME GAME

There's a nice lady in Arkansas who is pregnant with her 18th child. You've probably heard about her...she and her husband and their platoon have made the rounds on talk shows. They seem like fine people and are self-sufficient, so who am I to criticize? What totally amazes me, however, is NOT how they manage to raise this many children, but how in the world they're able to attach the right name to the right face. I can't even keep my cats Muffin and Fluffy straight. I've just started using "Fluffin" to stand for either one of them.

To complicate matters, all these kids, ranging in ages from 1 to 20, have names that start with the letter "J," which makes some of them sound a lot alike. There's Jeremiah and Jedidiah. Joshua, John, Johannah, Jana. Jinger, Jennifer, and Jill. Joseph, Josiah, Joy. Jesse and Justin. James, Jason, and Jackson. How do these parents do it? I think it would have been a whole lot simpler to have started with an "A" name and worked their way down the alphabet. In a few years, they'd be ready for little Zelda and could call it quits.

When I was teaching, I would occasionally call a student by an older brother or sister's name....one who'd been in my classroom in a previous year. It was annoying to the poor mislabled kids, so I started giving them 3 points extra credit whenever I made such a goof. That seemed to ease the disgust with my brain lapse. In fact, some became eager for me to screw up just so they could get the points and were disappointed when I addressed them by their correct names.

I wonder if these parents in Arkansas use name tags, numbers, or have their kids color-coded. Truth be known, I suspect they use the identification method that's been the most tried and true for confused parents over the years: "Hey, you! Get over here! Right this minute!" Works every time.