Friday, January 19, 2007

The Doggies

It started off playfully enough.

Big A and Li’l A and I all have different surnames. (Long story; some other time.) Anyway, for emotional reasons, I’ve been meaning to alter our last names to reflect the fact that all three of us are now ONE family. Of course, we started with the obvious suspects, a mix of our family names: we tried Wandawasi (my family name) coupled with Laskey (his) as in “the Wandawasi-Laskeys are all crazy” but that’s just so tediously fangled.

We needed something else.

Long ago, we’d watched an American-Desi movie (in fact, it might have even been called American Desi) in which the FOB cousin mangled the “dawg” greeting and hailed his homies with “Hello Doggies.” That totally cracked us up for days after. And so, for years now, we’ve been calling each other “Doggie.” Except when Big A is mad at me and yells, “Sweet Baby Puppy” (because you know, the fact that he’s actually yelling at me coupled with mean names could traumatize me forever).

So last night after he returned from work at 11:30, we’re gnawing this to bits again, and he facetiously says that perhaps we should just go with “Doggie” except perhaps we could ethnicize the spelling a bit so it’s not too obvious. I came up with “Daghix” (‘x’ silent) and “Daghe” (with an accent on the ‘e’) and fell asleep laughing.

This morning, I realized that I’m 100% in love with the name and 90% serious about actually changing our name to Daghe (more Indian sounding). While we were stopped at a red light, I confess this, and am stunned when the normally super sensible Big A reveals that he likes the name 90% and is 40% serious about changing to it.

Helllllooooo Daghes!

Update: Li’l A came home from school and said: No way. It’s a strange day when the voice of reason comes from the seven-year-old.

Update Again: Big A just reminded me that the movie was actually Dude, Where's the Party and the line was actually, "Hello, Doggie friends!" (which is infinitely funnier!)

_

6 comments:

Bengali Chick said...

Girl- Is that your realy surname? I'm just worried b/c I've learned there are mad pyshcos on the internet.

pied piper said...

Sheesh. Three cheers for seven-yr-olds. Now, can you have your kid go talk to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about this running for president thing?

maya said...

B.C., It's safe--i just googled myself to no avail. "Wandawasi" is sufficiently buried amongst the many initialized family names i bear fo rit to be safe. Thanks for looking out for me :)

Piper :)
Welcome back! Strange, innit, that the seven-year-old is the only one of us you haven't yet met...

Hey--may be the American public *is* ready for Rodham-Clinton and Obama.

(Thus sayeth the genius formerly, albeit briefly, known as Doggie)

Anonymous said...

Oh Daghe is so Maharashtrian sounding that I swear I've heard it before...a variation of Dighe, another common Maharashtrian name.

maya said...

JOAT--oooh! Nice! Thanks!

(restarting my campaign for 'Daghe'-- how much do you think it takes to buy a seven-year-old's vote :)?

Anonymous said...

Convince him it rhymes or invent a superhero with the same last name :-) that usually buys 7 year olds.

"I'm a weirdo/doofus/nerd/naif" (Part MXVIII)

I realized during my meditation this morning that my energy for contacting so many people yesterday (the "emotional labor" that St...