My name is...

Virginia's teachers came by the house to meet her last week in preparation for the start of Kindergarten. One of the questions they asked (when Virginia let them get a word in edgewise) was what she liked to be called.

Virginia is easy, because she goes by her first name. But we can take some comfort in knowing that on Horatio's first day of school, a couple years form now, he will not have to raise his hand to "William" during role call and then say, "Actually, I go by Horatio."

Although, I do fully expect that by the time he is five he will have that sentence down. Currently when I call him by other names like Peanut, or Manzilla, or Handsome Devil he says, "I not Peanut! I 'Ratio!" I still get away with calling him Buns, because I've convinced him his full name is William Horatio Honeybuns Nelson.

With new, kid-friendly, systems in place, my children's teachers will already know what to call them on the first day. And they will be spared embarrassment.

Until... Latin class.

I had a college Latin professor who was fond of having the entire class decline names in unison. Not all English names decline in Latin (Sarah doesn't, unless you leave off the -h) but we had Latin names for the class that did.

On a side note, our teacher chose our Latin names to be as close as possible in meaning to our given names. My Latin name was Regina, because Sarah means "princess" and Regina means "queen." We did have the option of asking for a different name but I only remember one person taking advantage of this. He wanted to be called Janus. A few days later I saw him creeping around my dorm trying to follow someone through the door (we had hand scanners). Janus was not such a master of portals after all.

Anyway, not only did this professor have the class decline all of our names, but he had us decline the names of visitors as well. When my sister, Amanda visited:

"Surgite, Amanda!"

He made her stand up in front of the class.

"Vos omnes, declinate Amanda."

The class responded:
"Amanda
Amandae
Amandae
Amandam
Amanda
O Amanda
Amandae
Amandarum
Amandis
Amandas
Amandis
O Amandae"

As it turns out, Virginia's name declines perfectly.

Surgite, Virginia!

Vos omnes, declinate Virginia.

Virginia
Virginiae
Virginiae
Virginiam
Virginia
O Virginia
Virginiae
Virginiarum
Virginiis
Virginias
Virginiis
O Virginiae

Horatio's name got a little corrupted from the original Latin. But, it comes from Horatius:

Surgite, Horatius!

Vos omnes, declinate Horatius.

Horatius
Horatii
Horatio
Horatium
Horatio
O Horati
Horatii
Horatiorum
Horatiis
Horatios
Horatiis
O Horatii

The cats (Socrates and Penelope) got Greek names. The kids got Latin names. And Latin names bear hidden gifts.

A little bit of a psychopath

At the beginning of the summer, during a dinner between Atlanta Fringe performances with family and friends, the conversation drifted to that bit of wisdom from Law and Order about how psychopaths often began by torturing animals as children. We were all nodding sagely when my stepbrother said, "I mean, haven't we all tortured an animal at least once?"

I thought, "Not me!" I was a vegetarian for four years. I don't kill spiders. I adopted pets that needed homes. I am love animals!

Except...

Artistic rendering of moon jellies from markshasha.com

Beautiful, right? Elegant. They glow in the dark at night, too. Imagine being in a boat in the evening looking into water as luminous as the starry sky above. 

I was the death of many a poor moon jelly. During the summers that my sister and I spent in Long Island we went to the beach with our cousins multiple times a week. As groups of children do, we invented new games to play. We tied our beach towels like capes and jumped from the bulkhead onto the sand. We dug canals. And we raced melting moon jellies down the wooden stair railing. 

The water was full of the creatures, which bumped up against us as we swam, sometimes putting us into a panic, wondering if we would get stung. We knew the moon jellies didn't sting, but there were occasionally red jellyfish in the water that did, and when you didn't see what you bumped it was a little disconcerting. 

The moon jellies didn't sting. They didn't even appear to have tentacles. Just little blobs of jelly. We would catch some and put them in buckets. Then two contenders would choose their jellies. They would each place their jelly at the top of the railing and release. The jellies would slowly slide down the railing, but as they did, they evaporated. There might be nothing left before the jelly made it to the end. 

I did this. I'm not proud of it. But is it true, do you think? Have we all, at least once, acted like a psychopath?