How You Know My Name?

This post is devoted to names of all sorts, especially the strange ones and the ones that pop up surprisingly in otherwise mundane circumstances.

I shall begin with an anecdote. Many of you, dear readers, may have heard this one already, but I still think it's a good place to start.

I was at a McDonald's recently (by which I mean 3 or 4 months ago), and was purchasing some Chicken McNuggets to put my raging hunger into remission. McDonald's food is crap, but it is consistent crap. You always know exactly what you're going to get, across the whole continuum of McDonald's franchises. What you're going to get is not really anything good, but at least it's a certainty.

But I digress. I was being helped at that particular McDonald's by a young woman of color named Ashley. (Her name may not actually have been Ashley, but it was certainly a good, standard, six-letter name.) It should be noted at this point that Ashley was not wearing a nametag of any kind.

She was very helpful, and upon receiving my fried pressed-and-molded assorted chicken parts,
and having paid for same, I said, "Thank you very much, Ashley."

At this point things got a little odd. "How you know my name?" inquired Ashley. It was then I realized how I knew her name. "I read it off your teeth," I said. And indeed, across her six front teeth, done up in the metallic veneers known colloquially as a "grill" (or "grille", I'm not sure), were the six letters spelling out her name.

"Oh," said Ashley.

I really felt I should say something more. "Your grill (grille?) is bangin'," I said.

Yeah. Bangin'.

Now, on to Strange Names Abroad in the World. Once again, I present photographic documentary evidence that I'm not just making this stuff up.




Yes, that's correct. The Shalom Christian Center. With crosses and everything. The goyim are stealing all our best stuff. It started with kosher salt and kosher pickles, but now they're using "shalom" to label their goyishe Christian Center. At least they have Betty's Beauty Salon right next door to keep their complexions and coiffures as clean and squared-away as their souls.



I don't know who did this or why. Now, while it looks to have been done with plastic cups, the way one normally makes a sign in a chainlink fence, this sign has actually been done with squarish bucket-like things made of heavy-duty plastic. This is a fence sign for the ages. I can only suppose that these three letters are someone's initials, and that the someone in question is blissfully unaware of the additional meaning appertaining to those selfsame three letters. Either way, it's really weird.



And, of course, the Crossword Community Church. One wonders if the pun is intended. Either way, all I can think of when I see this sign is an itinerant country preacher, mounted on horseback, with his severe black broad-brimmed hat just above his severe black-bearded face and his severe black suit. He has a folded newspaper on his knee, and is chewing meditatively on the eraser of a hand-sharpened pencil.

"What's a five-letter word for the Good Shepherd, Lamb of God, Wonderful, Counselor, Immanuel, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace, the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of our faith, Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Lily of the Valley, Bright and Morning Star, Light of the World, Messiah?" he asks.

Sometimes those crosswords are brutal.