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Alison Konrad

New to the Atlanta Hipster Mom scene as of June 2006, Alison Konrad is a Mom's Mom, Mom-About-Town kind of gal with an arsenal of diving-in-head-first experience in navigating the sometimes complicated World of Motherhood, and the trials and tribulations of juggling the identities of being a working...

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What's In a Name?

I get a good chuckle every time I log onto this website. I look at my blog name-Mumsy-k.  LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH!  Honestly, it is my very first internet moniker.  I came up with it myself of course.  At the time I had not decided whether or not I was ever going to use my real name.   And, Mumsy was all I could think of that was “mother related” that made me laugh.  The word “mumsy” was introduced into my vocabulary on a family sailing trip in college.  Our boat was docked in Harbor Town at Hilton Head Island – close to the bar, over by the famous lighthouse.  A hurricane would not have even noticed us inside our port and starboard tomb - the equivalent of a rather expensive fiberglass tent.  From our vantage point, we could see and hear the revelers enjoying cocktails with their Lacoste shirt collars pointing towards the star-filled sky.  My brother and I would crack each other up imagining the conversations above, a “Kid’s In the Hall” rip off dialogue beginning with – “Mumsaaaaaaaaay, the waiter forgot my spritzerrrrrrrrrrrr”.   My brother being a comedic genius – he comes in pretty handy most days.  The name game lasted the entire weekend, every sentence beginning with – “Mumsaaaaaaaay…”  So that’s that.  That’s where it was born. I seriously doubt the boy will ever find a reason to call me “Mumsy” in real life, and if he ever flips his collar up or orders a spritzer – well, we will just cross that bridge when we get there.  I am certain I will love him no less.  The “K” is from “Konrad”.  My last name.

Naming myself was fun. Naming my son was much more serious business.  My husband and I had one rule – if either of us had a reason to nix a name, it was nixed.  Unfortunately for the baby names list that I had been compiling in the back of an address book for 15 years – just in case - my husband had a “nixing” story for every name I had in my arsenal.  That guy ate paste.  That guy threw up in science class in 3^rd grade.  That guy airbrushed his name on muscle-t-shirts in Panama City, FL.  Futile.  Interestingly, we ended up with a handful of names that all came from the same chapter in a baby naming book titled “Names on the Verge of Extinction”.  And, so it is.  I love the boy’s name.  We weren’t sure we had the cahones , but will never regret that we did. Let’s just say it’s not traditional.

“What’s in a name?,” asked Shakespeare. In a different name arena - I always wonder about people who drive cars with personalized license plates.  What are they trying to tell me?  How much thought did they put into it?  Does it say something about the person driving the car?  Does it make them laugh?  Is it supposed to make me laugh?  Because when I see a tag that simply reads “RED,” I am really hoping the driver has red hair when I almost wreck, finally getting a good look.  My husband saw a car this week with a tag that read “BUTALUV” – really? I don’t know what I picture the driver to look like exactly, but that one got a loud guffaw and a knee slap out of this girl.

So, while I wouldn’t put MUMSY-K on my license plate, I might put ???????, if punctuation were allowed.  I probably wouldn’t put anything. My TY7889 is just fine.  After all, What’s in a name?