S. O. B.

You thought you knew where this post was going, but you don't.

When I was in second grade my mom bought 7 matching ("coordinating" would actually be a better word) sweaters for all of the kids in the family. We had a family photo taken; even my 2nd grade school photo features this sweater.

The way-cool 80's trend-of-the-moment was getting said "preppy" sweaters monogrammed. The monograms would look something like this, but in fancy, swirly letters: A O J . Note: the last initial of the full name was put in the center. So, in my normal-sized mormon family of seven siblings we had:

A O L , C O P , C O A , E O J , A O J , and S O J.

But, then there was mine. When my mom brought home the highly-anticipated monogrammed sweaters (no chance of hand-me-downs here!) we were excited. Then I noticed that my monogram was clearly different from everyone else's. Instead of my initials emblazed grandly across the center of the sweater, they were aligned less magnificently at a diagonal down the side. And instead of the last initial being placed "front and center" like everyone else's, it was in its regular, boring order: First initial first, middle initial next, last initial at the end.

Imagine Cindy-Lou Who's little voice here: "But, mom, why...why does my sweater look different from everyone else's?"

Mom: "I don't want any kids at school to make fun of you." (*She must have had a serious premonition...this happened anyway...without the help of the sweater!*)

Me: "Why would they make fun of my initials but no one else's?"

Mom: "Your initials in that order stand for something else that is a bad word."

She wasn't one for swearing...especially in front of her seven-year-old. So, it took some serious prying of the older sibings to figure out what S. O. B. stood for.

The End

P.S. Naming a child is a tricky thing, and I, in no way, blame my parents for this mishap. (How could they have predicted the preppy trends of the '80s?) I, myself, made a child-naming mistake that is probably more blatent. My husband gave me "free reign" to name our first 2 children after he witnessed the horror of child-birth first hand. So for the third one there was a lot of debate, I couldn't make up my mind, and I told him it was totally up to him to pick out the first name. The middle name was a joint effort: it turned out to be what we thought was a good, solid-sounding name steeped in family history. It wasn't until my son was a month old that one of my dear sisters pointed out that his name has a double meaning: Oscar Knight / Oscar Night (as in The Academy Awards). Yikes. Do you think he'll ever notice? Or care?