Monday, October 09, 2006
Dime a Dozen
I'm getting a late start on the day this morning, having spent the last couple of hours shuttling Georgia to the doctor and then to preschool, picking up medicines at the pharmacy, and such like. She's fine (ear infection, early signs of conjunctivitus) but my morning is shot. So when I see that everyone is doing this "How Many of Me" thing this morning, it seems an easy way to ease into the day.
Yikes. There are eighty Chris Robersons. That seems like a lot. (Tangent: I recall when we first discussed the use of the apostrophe-s for possessives in elementary school. The rule we were taught, flying in the face of Strunk & White, was that singular words ending in "s" could be made possessive by just adding the apostrophe, without the s. There was some discussion of pronunciation, and I asked how you would pronounce the possessive plural of a word ending in "s", like Chrises', for something belonging to more than one Chris. My teacher looked me in the eye, and just said, "I think one Chris is more than enough, thank you.")
This is a cheat, though. My first name isn't really Chris. I just wanted to see how many people shared the name by which I'm known. My first name is actually John. So how many John Robersons are there?
Woof! More than a thousand?! Well, between my dad and me, that's two right there. (The whole First-name-is-John, Go-by-your-middle-name is a family tradition. Had Georgia been born a boy, she'd have been John Carter Roberson, for reasons that should probably be familiar to many who know my obsessions.)
There are 236 Allison Bakers, for what it's worth. But only 33 Georgia Robersons. So it's really just me that's as common as dirt, it appears.
Yikes. There are eighty Chris Robersons. That seems like a lot. (Tangent: I recall when we first discussed the use of the apostrophe-s for possessives in elementary school. The rule we were taught, flying in the face of Strunk & White, was that singular words ending in "s" could be made possessive by just adding the apostrophe, without the s. There was some discussion of pronunciation, and I asked how you would pronounce the possessive plural of a word ending in "s", like Chrises', for something belonging to more than one Chris. My teacher looked me in the eye, and just said, "I think one Chris is more than enough, thank you.")
This is a cheat, though. My first name isn't really Chris. I just wanted to see how many people shared the name by which I'm known. My first name is actually John. So how many John Robersons are there?
Woof! More than a thousand?! Well, between my dad and me, that's two right there. (The whole First-name-is-John, Go-by-your-middle-name is a family tradition. Had Georgia been born a boy, she'd have been John Carter Roberson, for reasons that should probably be familiar to many who know my obsessions.)
There are 236 Allison Bakers, for what it's worth. But only 33 Georgia Robersons. So it's really just me that's as common as dirt, it appears.
