Guess Who's Back... Back Again...
After a brief hiatus, I have returned*. And, I have e-dopted a small blue tiger named Bandit, at right. Point to him, he does funny things. Silly Bandit.
* Not exactly by popular demand, but I thank you both for your concern.
posted by becky @ 19.4.05
2 comments
2 Comments:
Welcome back!!
By the way, I love Bandit, but why "Bandit?"
--Julie
Thanks! Glad to be back.
"Bandit" is a long-ish story, as most things in my family are.
My parents recently adopted two puppies*, and could not think of names for them.
Their first dog was "Fleggy," a mash-up of Peggy (my dad's childhood dog), and Fluffy (my mom's childhood dog). "Puffy," apparently, was not yet en vogue. Fleggy endured much ridicule stemming from her name**.
Their second dog was "Pepper," who was just an icy teenage-girl-glare-from-me away from being "Gershwin" because once she fell asleep to a Gershwin CD. Pepper was named after a Wall Street Journal cartoon "Salt and Pepper" and it worked out well because we had called her "Puppy" for about a week, and she was getting used to it. Pepper was a solid dog, and a solid name.
So what is a girl to do? I lobbied -- hard -- for good names for the Brown Boys, and thought "Luke and Owen" was the obvious choice. I mean, these puppies are REALLY cute.*** But I don't think my dad understood it, and the dogs fell victim to me living 700 miles away and not being able to sit on the phone with my mom all day to name the dogs.
My parents decided that one of the dogs looked like a bear. This is only true in that brown animals tend to look alike because they are brown, have 4 legs, and can't talk. They then forgot they said that one looked like a bear, and thought that the other looked smokey in color. They then thought that "Smokey the Bear" sounded somewhat familiar, and settled on "Smokey" and "Bear."
I tried to salvage what I could. I did not want a dog named Bear****. My brother and I, and my parents at times, agreed on "Smokey and The Bandit." But then my parents forgot that they agreed on that. And my mom repeated her mantra about not naming animals mean names, because you don't even realize when you say it, that you're saying it mean. But "Bandit" is hardly "Killer" in my book. But I apparently didn't get a vote.
So, Bandit the Blue Tiger is my homage to a good name lost in the confusion of my parents suddenly having two very, very, very energetic puppies and needing a way to firmly tell them "NO."
As an epilogue, Bear steals toys from Smokey, making him an actual Bandit. But he's just a cutie, so you have to love him, despite my parents' lack of creativity and 15 extra minutes to reason out the dogs' names.
* They are mutts, but probably some combination of shepherd-husky-golden-chow.
** Among other things.
*** I also lobbied for "Lewis and Clark" as those explorers brought woolly mammoth bones back to Thomas Jefferson in the LA Purchase days (my dad collects dinosaur bones, which is CLEARLY a longer story).
**** Especially after Bennett told me he knew of a dog named Bear whose owners' kids gave it mohawks.
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