My REAL Name

Things were much different in my life when I was a child. When I was five years old, my whole family would refer to me as “Lanny”. Now a normal person like yourself would think that this name came from some relation to my ACTUAL name or that there was some clever instance in which the name Lanny suddenly became my nickname. This however, was not the case.

One Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave for church, my parents and siblings all loaded into the car and were waiting on me so we could go. I was still at the breakfast table trying to down the rest of my cinnamon-enriched oatmeal. Eventually after about 5 minutes of waiting, my father finally rushed into the kitchen and demanded, “Lanny, hurry up or we’re gonna be late for church!” Now, I had heard the funny names my parents would call me before but LANNY certainly wasn’t one of them. I immediately started looking around my kitchen for traces of a random construction worker or hobo named Lanny that my father must have been referring to. Once again though, my father stared me in the eyes and said “LANNY LET’S GO.”

Now, let me just say, I’m STILL five years old. I don’t know WHO the heck is Lanny, but I reluctantly follow my, at the moment, INSANE father to the car and we head on our way to church. The whole car ride I remained silent, wondering if somehow my whole life up to this point had been a lie and I really possessed the riff-raffish name of Lanny. By the time we arrived at church I had convinced myself that it was all just one of the frequent quirky jokes my father tended to play on me. However, once we got to Sunday school, he made sure he told my teacher that it was “LANNY’S fault that we’re late,” as he filled out my Lanny nametag he also added, “Feel free to punish Lanny in the manner which you feel is appropriate.”

This is the point where I had absolutely had enough. I finally turned to my dad and said, “Who in the WORLD is Lanny?! My name is ADAM. At least I THINK it is, unless I have been lied to all five years of my life on this earth!” I felt like the weight of a thousand elephants had just been lifted off of my shoulders as I released all of my anger. I mean, if anyone should have been punished at this point it should be my dad who was referring to his son Adam as a completely RANDOM, and might I add, HORRIBLE name. What came next though, truly shocked me.

After my outburst, I saw my dad’s eyes well up. This was something that I had never seen before. He even looked at me in somewhat of a scared manner. He sat me down and he also took a seat. Now let me remind you we are in a kindergarten classroom so the chair that my father sat in was only large enough for a five year old. It was quite funny to watch him try and sit comfortably on the chair but that was beside the point. He took my hand and began to tell me that my life had indeed been a complete lie. Everything that I had known to be true simply was not. He went on to tell me that when I was born, it had been my mother’s plan to name me Adam but my father wished otherwise. You see, at the age of 10, my dad had a pet turtle that he found off of I-30. He had discovered him right outside of Lanny’s Tire Company, and after he brought the disease-infested creature home, he decided to name it “Lanny”. My father added that Lanny had been abused by his previous owner, Marcie, who left her signature on Lanny’s shell with pink Sharpi… Long story short, my father changed the name on the birth certificate while my mom wasn’t watching to commemorate the life of Lanny. She found out and changed it back, but apparently my dad picked that day to have a fit about it and just start calling me Lanny.

Now, at this point I wanted to confront my dad about going behind my mom’s back in order to name me after his nasty pet turtle but I was never given the chance. As I opened my mouth to begin my second outburst, the world crashed down on me. Literally. At least it felt like it. My dad had exceeded the weight limit on the 2 foot tall chair and broke the chair causing it and HIM to crash down onto my feet. You would have thought I had just been set on fire after the screams I let out then.

I spent the next three days in the hospital suffering from two broken feet. The next three months I split my time between wheelchair, motorized cart, and crutches because I simply could not walk.

Contrary to what you may think, those old people scooters are NOT that fun either. You’d think they would be but they only go up to about 3 miles per hour. There was one time I went up to the Chambrel Retirement Home though at 1am to watch Morice and Velma Drag-Scoot. Drag-Scooting is another form of drag racing. I won $15 for betting on Velma and she then let me drive her scooter for a few minutes. Hers was sweeeet. It went all the way to 7mph. Needless to say I was a bit jealous and looking forward to the day that I’d be old enough to get into drag-scooting. Unfortunately, Morice was angry at his loss and as a result leaked the illegal racing to the police which officially ended the racing and got the 96 year old Velma 4 years in jail which, let’s face it, was basically a life sentence. I told her as I wheeled her into jail that I wouldn’t stop fighting to make drag-scooting legal until the day she died but due to her low blood pressure and food poisoning from a poorly cooked chicken breast, I stopped fighting after only about two weeks.

Ahh yes, all this a result of my name actually being Lanny. My family ended up referring to me as Lanny from then on up until just a few years ago. I guess the story’s not that interesting though…