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.