Names and the single mom

Driving down the road the other day (yes, all my meaningful and/or interesting interaction with my son seems to occur in vehicles), my son asked me what his name was going to be when he grew up.

The ensuing conversation was amusing in and of itself -- and we'll get to that in a moment -- but what first caught my attention was that he didn't ask IF he'd have a different name when he grew up; he skipped ahead and asked WHAT that name would be.

This is a question that I seem to ask a lot, but where in the world did he get that idea?? Sometimes I can perceive or deduce where the seed of some bizarre question started, but I've got nothing here. Where ever did the idea that he'd change names come from?

At any rate, I told him that his name would be the same as it is now. This, as it turned out, was not an answer he was pleased to hear.

"I don't want my name to be the same," he announced rather petulantly.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I don't like it," he said.

Well, so-ooooo sorry about that, buddy boy. Didn't realize I was saddling you with the world's worst moniker.

Despite my slightly wounded feelings, I gathered my mommy wits about me and realized that arguing with him about the relative merits of his name would get me nowhere, so I accepted the premise of the conversation and simply asked what he'd like his name to be.

He calmly responded that he'd like his middle name to be his new name. I told him he could go by his middle name if he wanted (a confession: I wasn't serious about that offer in the least because I want him to go by his first name, but I was taking an appeasement approach on the fairly reliable assumption that he'd forget about his newfound stance in a day or two), but that wasn't good enough. He wanted the order of his names switched altogether, thank you very much. His middle name would be his first name, and his first name would be his new middle name.

"I will henceforth be known as this," he pronounced. OK, maybe he didn't use that exact language, but he did make a clear statement to the effect that he was reordering his name whether I liked it or not.

Again, going with the approach that picking an abstract fight with a 5 year old was a losing game no matter what, I simply said, "OK."

Of course, my earlier statement about the short-lived nature of his conviction was correct, and by the time the first opportunity to directly address him by his name rolled around, he had completely forgotten and answered happily to his (real) first name. And I've heard nothing further about it since then -- for now at least.