Friday, June 06, 2008

May I "Lance" That Boil For You?

Steve is a huge fan of Lance Armstrong. And rightly so. The man not only won seven Tour de France titles, but did it after winning a battle with testicular cancer that his doctors pretty much assumed he had already lost. I admire Lance Armstrong too, but not enough to name one of our children after him; which is what Steve wanted to do.

Why did I object so to naming our second-born "Lance"? For one thing, all the words that rhyme with Lance are bad. To whit: dance, pants, prance, romance (OK that one's not so bad). All words that remind me of that poem that some wag feels the need to leave on bathroom walls:

No matter how do jump and dance,
That one last drop stays in your pants.

Then there are the definitions for the word lance. Verbs: to spear, to stab, to open with a stabbing tool. Nouns: a spear, a stabbing device, a tube with a nozzle for cleaning furnace walls, a whale-killing implement. None of the mental images that go with these definitions are ones that I want to associate with one of my children. The deal breaker with this name? If I was to do a word association test with "lance", my first response would be "boil". As in "I'm sorry sir, that pustulant boil on your ass will need to be lanced in order to relieve the pressure." Enough said.

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