(Continued from 1/7 blog)
I adored my Grandpa Bob. He had visited a few times before I was old enough to start school. I missed kindergarten due to a family move from a trailer court in New Mexico to a farm in Missouri. Grandpa joined us on the farm a couple years after we moved. He excelled at playing solitaire and teasing us. I never really understood why he lived with us, but I enjoyed him being there. He wasn’t much to help out around the farm, and in that way I took after him.
My dad was quite the opposite. I cannot remember a single evening after supper that he did not drag us boys out to the machine shed to hand him tools while he worked until it was our bedtime. Once while we were cutting cordwood, I was sitting on a stump daydreaming. Over the roar of the chainsaw, I heard Dad yell at me, “Get off your fuzzy butt and get to work.” I was a first grader and my grandpa Bob had great fun with this new name. He called me Fuzz or Fuzzy until the day he died.
As I began attending junior high, my school name altered. I attended seven different classes each day. My first hour teacher was the benevolent Mr. Shockley. Before taking roll on the first day, he informed us we were no longer in grade school. If we wanted to be called by a different name, let him know and he would call us by that name. Andrew wanted to be Andy, Michael wanted to be Mike and I thought this would be a good time to put an end to my dual identity. When he called for Edward Kentner, I asked to be called Lee. He dutifully jotted this down and called on Royce Gastanue next. He also asked to be called Lee. What? I’d known him since third grade and he had always been Royce. This was going to be confusing for everyone. Not only would I have a new name, there would be two Lees to keep separate. A week later I asked Mr. Shockley to start calling me Ed like Mr. Dobbs, my second hour teacher. He never did.
During my late junior high and early senior high years, I found my mom had another name she sometimes used. Thankfully, I only heard it a few times, but it chilled me to the bone. It is the name all children should fear. “Edward Lee Kentner, come here this minute,” she would command. Everyone knows if a full name is called followed by a command, what is about to happen, won’t be good.
(continued and concluded 1/21) To join the NCI call 800-835-2097 x3
