'If only, if only,' the woodpecker sighed.

Ayres.

That's that my middle name could have been.

Granted, "Davis" is the only part of my three-part name people can spell correctly. When I was in elementary school, my teachers (or one of them, I can't truly remember) spelled, so often, my name "Allison Harmon" that I started to spell it that way, too. I was a really smart kid. When my dad found out, he was endlessly furious. I remember that argument. I think it's one of the only memories from when I was that young that I remember without pictures or family lore -- besides taking turns walking on the hill in front of Lindley with my dad's glasses, eyes glued to the ground. The step-in-fake-holes effect. Anyway, he was furious, I didn't understand why, the usual. But the point of my story is this: For 20 years (yes, even as a small baby!) I suffered with the manliness of my name. Alison Davis Harman. Boy Boy Man. Convinced, as I was, that my parents had wanted a son (and very in tune to the Russian style of the obvious but hidden meaning of one's name) it was saddening, every time I thought about it.

But Ayres (pronounced Airs) would have been wonderfully 1940s Poirot. Yeah, I would have spelled it horribly for a while, resulting in a hippy both Cartman from Southpark and my own sister would have loathed, but that kind of happened anyway and I grew out of it... in practice.

Dinner's almost ready. It's 3:57 p.m. My grandfather starts asking for dinner about 3:30.