What's in a Name Anyway

Pictured: Dad (ar), me (ar), Cousin Carl (er), Lisa (er), and Bernice (er)

The misspelling of my name originated on a cool Fall New York day in November of 1939. In a stupor after birthing her fourth child, my grandmother misspelled her own last name on the birth certificate.

Grandma Masler

Not being prone to the execution of a plan, she never bothered to get around to changing it, my father's birth certificate. So it was I found myself 84 years later arguing with the night clerk at the hotel in Elmira.

"It's spelled ER on the form," she says. 

"But I spell it AR," I say. 

To which she responds, "But it's ER."

I calmly explained that my cousin made the reservation and that she spells our last name with an ER; we spell ours with an AR.

With that, the clerk stapled the receipt to the invoice, looked me dead in the eyes, handed me my room key and firmly said, "You guys better get on the same page."

As if. Anyway, I was just relieved the old battle-axe let me have a room. 

Soon after checking in, we caught up with my cousin, a NY State Supreme Court Judge and there it is rubbed in my face again, his name - our name - on various plaques spelled with the ER. 

Who would you believe spells it correctly -- a state supreme court judge or a little country grandma?  However, in this picture, the ARs outnumber the ERs. So there's that.

Anyway, the name you answer to matters much more. Here's to Pookie.