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What's In A Name?
(are you kidding me?)

My last name is Aycock...pronounced A-cock. Although I am proud of being my father's child, it was hard to get through high school with that name. You understand. To add to my pain and suffering (I avoiding saying our' because my brother was simply not bothered by it...neither was my sister, but for different reasons) ...my dads nickname. Stretch. Yeah...Stretch Aycock. He was a tall, lanky lad and was tagged with the nickname at a young age. Enter, my mom. Mom had her wisdom teeth pulled when she was in junior high school, before she even met my dad. Her cheeks swelled and she was lovingly referred to as, (yer gonna love this) Puff. Yep. Puff Aycock.

So my brother and I decided to make it a "thang". We didn't have a lot of things in common in high school...for that matter...ever, but we did share the name. Because high school kids are so incredibly droll, they all called us by our last name. My brother was amused. I was not. We'll leave it at that. It was bad enough just having someone scream my last name down the crowded hallway of our school, echoing endlessly, but what made it even worse was the fact that most of my friends had shortened my first name (and I don't believe this was thought all the way through in the beginning) to Ter. That's right. Ter A-cock. Geesh. While I'm all about fun and games, you gotta admit, this could lead more than a few red faces. Maybe some therapy. Okay...lotsa therapy. I was oblivious to it in elementary school, leaving my inspired junior high school compadres to call upon their creativity. That's when I started dreading role call. Teachers would get to my name...hesitate, then look up and say "Eye-cock?"...which was the common mispronunciation, but the fun started when almost every kid in class corrected her or him by screaming back "A-cock!" (It was a small community and everybody knew everybody). As I slowly put my forehead down on my desk, I would wait for the onslaught of laughter that I knew would follow. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was funny too. It was the only time a kid could get away with saying that and not get in trouble. Ah, the memories.

College was much better (sarcasm). I had mistakenly assumed that college kids were more mature and would not make this an issue (and you know what they say about assuming).

In the first class I attended role was called, last names first, of course. And I was almost always first, because my last name began with an A, so I cringed when

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