Five Letter Words

By some magical unknown power in the universe, our first three children's names all had five letters. Add M-O-M-M-Y and D-A-D-D-Y and the whole family was united in theme. I don't remember when the realization was made, but I do recall that it was outside with sidewalk chalk when we discovered that all of our names perfectly aligned. And so, it was no accident that our fourth and final child just had to have five letters in his name as well. It may seem trivial, but as we discussed numerous names at the dinner table, our children already sensed baby feeling left out at the mention of Jonathan or Jefferson. Thus it was finalized and we are perfected in our five letter naming. And really it is quite convenient.

When learning to spell their names, we can use the same song otherwise sung about a dog named B-I-N-G-O. The names are short enough that nobody has shortened them, thus far. And lately we've discovered another convenience when it comes to competitions in our house. We call them "games" but they are rather competitive. Today it was the "nose picking game". Each member of the family had their letters up on the chalk board and whenever someone was caught picking their nose a letter could be erased by the "catcher". Gross, I know. But it's gotten to this point where the habit has to be curbed somehow. Whoever had any letters left at the end of the day would get a piece of Halloween candy (and yes, somehow they still go for the rock hard bribe). At one point, the winning nose picker and leading loser of our game whined that it wasn't fair since his name was so short (or so it appeared at this point on the chalkboard). Thankfully, all of my children were named equally and so the whining had to cease, as it was unmerited. I can't wait to discover any other uses for this mathematically correct way of naming our offspring.