lite & lucid

It all started as a joke. My husband and I can’t remember which one of us had the idea. We had the first name nailed down pretty fast but the middle name was a real head scratcher. I believe the conversation took place one Saturday morning flipping through the baby name book and the conversation went something like this:

“Bryce Tristan?”

“Meh”

“Bryce Timothy?”

“Nope.”

“Bryce Bradley Burg? Wow. Too many B’s.”

“Well, if we can’t find anything we like, we can just name him Bryce Danger.”

“I love it. I don’t even know him yet and I’m jealous.”

We went back and forth making a pros and cons list over the next few months. Pro: His middle name would be Danger. Con: He’d never get out of a speeding ticket. Ever. And that was it really, we never got past those two before we decided we had plenty of time to come up with a suitable name for our first heir. Then I swear 5 minutes later we were at the hospital, sleep deprived, giggling hysterically with joy, holding our son when the nurse walked in and handed my husband the birth certificate paperwork. With his pen hovering over the blank under “Middle Name” he looked up at me with a silent question on his face and I chanted “Do it! Do IT! DO IT!!”. I noticed the hospital staff checked in on us much more regularly after that, but surprisingly, they discharged us right on schedule the next day.

So far, most people thinks it’s fun, or at least they pretend to. Honestly, I thought my family, who is relatively conservative, would be horrified but it was actually one of my mom’s greatest sources of pride. When Bryce was a few months old my mom and I took him to the mall and anyone who looked at him with ga ga eyes was accosted joyfully from my mom with “Isn’t he beautiful? His middle name is DANGER!” and I watched from behind the stroller as they’re expressions subtly changed to confusion, then concern, then they’d slowly back away, nodding and smiling. That was a fun outing.

It turned out my father in law, who is on the farther end of the liberal spectrum, had the biggest problem with it. During one conversation, my husband was gently shooting down his dad’s suggestions of more traditional names when he reached his breaking point and exclaimed “Well! He’ll never be elected president with a middle name like that!”. Jesse pondered it for a moment then replied, “I bet every 18-22 year old college student would skip class to vote for a guy with the middle name Danger.” He eventually came around.

When Bryce was 6 months old, I gave an amazing monologue to my friends exclaiming that I, having experienced the miracle of life one glorious time, was completely done having children. Unbeknownst to me, I was 7 weeks pregnant. A few days later when we discovered this information, I looked at Jesse and said, “Well, I guess this ones middle name can be Oops.” We settled on Gavin Mayhem, but a close contender was Gavin The Great. Maybe the next one…just kidding I’m not pregnant, don’t start that rumor.

So, have we completely ruined our children by giving them the middle names Danger and Mayhem? I’m sure some people think so. I don’t know, they’re only 3 and 4 but they look pretty well adjusted to me.

See how safe they are?

They’re still too young to understand just how awesome their middle names are. We told them recently and now they’re just confused because, understandably, I can’t use their middle names when they’re in trouble. I have a hard enough time keeping a straight face during scolding sessions as it is. So Bryce is going around telling people his name is Bryce Burg Danger Burg, well actually he he sings it like a super hero theme song…just when I thought it couldn’t get better that kid brings it up a notch! And every time I try to tell Gavin he is Gavin Mayhem Burg he looks at me funny and says,”No. I’m Gavin Burg.” Then he sounds it out slowly for me, “Ga-vin.” Sweet kid thinks I’ve lost my mind.