Tales from the Open Mic

These are true stories that have happened to me within the past week...

Story #1:

Last week I went to a poetry spot and somehow (don't ask, because the truth is I don't know) the host started talking about bad baby names. I'm paraphrasing here...She said something to the effect of "I have a friend who is a pre-school teacher and she had this cute little girl in her class named Dia...I'm thinking Dia that's different but cute, my friend said that's not her name I just refuse to call her by her FULL name...which is... Chalmydia."

A girl in the audience spoke up and she said "you think that's bad, I work in a NICU and we just had a baby in there name G'noreah (pronounced like Je-nora)"

Story #2:

So last night I went to another open mic poetry reading. While I was standing outside this girl walks by with this little brown baby--I mean so cute I almost swore it was a doll. Absolutely precious little girl with fat cheeks in a little warm suit because it was kinda chilly...you know I had to ask...

Me: "What's her name?"

(I'm sorry I am spelling this by phonetics)

Girl: "O-be-di-ji-ah."

Me: "Say that again"

Girl: "O-be-di-ji-ah."

me thinking to self: wish I had not left my phone at home, feeling the need to blog this immediately.

Smh. And I'm done. Poor precious baby.

Overheard in DC...

There is this great website called DCist that I check out at least weekly. It's basically about all things DC...think, your local online version of the City Paper or the equivalent.

Anyway, they run a column every week called "Overhead in DC" (just FYI, they also do versions of this for other cities such as NYC and LA). Overheard in DC is collection of the stupid things people have literally overheard...I'll admit I've even submitted a few gems. This past week's Overheard was just priceless so I've copied it here:

People's names can be pretty interesting: they can be traditional, they can have some deep meaning, or maybe they're just spelled a certain way to be different. Names can follow trends (how many Jaydens did you know 10 years ago?) or can fade away (Elmer or Agnes?) And there's all those funny names, like Richard Head. But sometimes, they're just terrible.

Overheard of the Week

Riding the Green line between Gallery Place and L'Enfant:

30-ish mother to her two children bouncing all over the place: "Perry Ellis and Elizabeth Claiborne! You two sit down and shut up right now!"

Check out more of last week's Overheard