Sunday, October 30, 2011

Why Is It Funny? I Don't Know. It Just Is.

In my first job out of college, I worked for a large corporation. The work wasn't particularly exciting, but I had a lot of fun because I shared a workspace in the cube farm with three other twenty-somethings who were just as misfit for corporate work as I was. We made each other laugh a lot, often by inventing silly games. One of my favorite games we played was called "Names That Are Verbs."

The rules were simple: shout out any name that you could think of that was also a verb. Of course there were the obvious ones: Rob, Pat, or Sue for example. Because it was an oral game, the homophones were particularly delicious: Phil, Wayne, Carrie, and (one of my all time favorites) Russell. I also loved Bea, the only intransitive verb, lovely in its existential simplicity.

I hadn't thought about that game for a while until recently during our explorations for names for our current baby-to-be. I had the magnificent delight of discovering a new one: Neil.

I still giggle when I think about it.

1 comment:

Jennie_C said...

I have always liked first and last names that make sense when said as a sentence, like baseball player "Kerry Wood."