Pity the Poor Guy Who Was Never Given a Normal Name

Just imagine the lifelong psychological trauma he must have endured only because his parents never bothered to give him a real first name.  A first name like most normal people get.

If you are an ethnic like us, our parents would never have dreamed of starting us out with a birth certificate that omits a real first name.

Pity a poor Italian kid with a name like Spaghetti Linguini. How would you feel about a Chinese kid with a name like Chopsuey Chowmein?

It has never happened yet, but we would ostracize anyone in the Polish community who stuck his or her child with a name like Kielbasa Kowalski.

Besides all these problems, how would you address a formal letter to someone with two last names?  Dear Madam or Dear Sir?  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have given a name like John or Jane so you would know the gender of the person you are writing to?

Maybe that’s why Anderson Cooper, a guy without a real first name, likes to ridicule us ethnics.  He went after the Polish community on Dyngus Day, the day after Easter, and thought the whole idea was stupid. Right on his nationwide TV show.   

For us it’s a fun day.  It’s a day our Polish boys spray water on the girls and get them to retaliate in some way. We don’t know exactly how this custom started.  But it does give our shy guys a chance to start a relationship, maybe even a romance.

The two-name guys like Anderson Cooper likely spent their childhood on Easter Monday looking behind a sofa or under a backyard shrub in the traditional Easter Egg Hunt.

Regardless the ethnic group you belong to, we think you will agree it sounds like a lot more fun to go after the girls than look around for a colored egg.

Rich people – the ones Obama says are the 1% millionaires who pay less taxes than we do – often give their kids two last names.  Just to let everyone know they belong to the “blue blood” class.  The high and mighty.  The “upper crust.”

Not every millionaire.  The parents of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, to just name two, were kinder to their children than the parents of Anderson Cooper were to him.

Remember the days of the black and white movies?  Remember how the Marx Brothers feasted on poking fun at the haughty, the snooty and the ostentatious?

If they were around today, they would show no mercy to Anderson Cooper and all the other “double names” who just can’t resist telling us how much better we ethnics should believe they are.

But don’t despair.  Mr. Cooper may still get his due.  The Three Stooges are making a revival with new actors, of course. Curly, Larry and Moe are gone years ago.

But if the Three Stooges are coming back, can the Marx Brothers be far behind?  Groucho and his brothers thrived on bashing the “blue bloods.”  These three Jewish guys would devour the “double names” like Anderson Cooper.

Then the ethnics could sit back and have a laugh. At the expense of Mr. Cooper, just the way he had at ours.

Frank Milewski
(516) 352-7125