Sometimes it takes me a while

Back when I started this blog, I fully intended to devise pseudonyms for my wife and son. Because, let's face it, just saying "my wife" and "my son" is cumbersome and boring. Yet somehow, I never quite got around to it.

Then I agreed to write for the new Mommy Blogs Toronto. It sounded like fun and might give me a new (or at least broader) audience. So I signed up and didn't worry about the details until I had to do things like come up with a title and a description. And in that process, I revisited the whole name issue.

So, since the names will be hitting the ether in my new 'column' soon, I thought I'd introduce them here.

For my wife, I have chosen (with her consent) Trillian. The name comes from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, one that both my wife and I really love. Trillian is a woman Arthur Dent, the protagonist, once met at a party, but struck out with, when she was known as Tricia MacMillan. He runs into her again, when he is picked up by a passing spaceship after being ejected from another one by the Vogons. It is a statistically improbable event, made possible by the Infinite Improbability Drive on the Heart of Gold. If all of that means nothing to you, go read the book, listen to the radio play, rent the movie.

Aside from the common interest, I have a sappy reason for choosing this name. Sure Adams plays it for the laughs, but there's something about the randomness of who we cross paths with and, against all odds, finding someone. My wife (I swear, I'll switch to Trillian soon) and I made a lot of choices along the way and could have ended up in very different places. I don't necessarily believe in Fate (with the capital F), but I get the sense that we would have met one way or another. We seriously considered several of the same schools for our undergraduate studies, and she thought about applying to the residence I lived in for a couple years. Not quite traversing the universe, but still an amazing statistical event.

The reason for the name (with my wife's help) I've chosen for my son here is less deep. He's had a whole range of nicknames, but most of them are based on variations of his name, so they would violate the whole anonymity thing. And then there are the names that wouldn't hold up to common decency; I don't think he'd appreciate pages covered with "Stinker Butt." So Scooter it is. Probably not a big surprise that he earned that nickname during the days he was learning to crawl.

So now I'm done with that, and only 3+ months after I intended to.

BTW, tomorrow is my 100th post (I think, need to recheck the numbers).