i’m one of those unfortunate hippie offspring that someone else mentioned in your earlier pages. while my dad was driving my mom to the hospital to give birth on a june morning in the 70s, she saw the sun coming up and waxed poetic in her delirium. they decided to name me summer dawn.

it was a bitch of a name in junior high, what with the douche jokes and all (i don’t know why they didn’t see that coming…). but it’s okay now, particularly because i don’t use the middle name at all, and at least people tend to remember who i am. they still can’t spell it, though…i get “somer” and “sommer” all the time. who woulda thunk. interestingly, most people seem to assume that i’m black if they’ve only seen my name and never met me. (i’m not.) every school i’ve ever attended has had at least one other summer, but i don’t think i’ve ever met a summer who was black. i’m not sure what that’s about.

a couple of other interesting names for your hall of shame…i’m an alum of the university of kentucky, and i seem to recall another student on campus named summer earlywine. i also graduated with a girl named nahtanha (pronounced nah-TAWN-ah). i think she said that nahtanha means “cornflower” in a native american dialect, not sure which one. and my great-grandmother’s name was navada (pronouced nah-VAY-dah). of course you know she was called and spelled “nevada”, like the state, all her life. she was the oldest of ten, and by the time they got to her younger siblings, the creative juices must have petered out, because they got called stuff like james and willie.

summer