All the Avas in Target, Let's hear some noise!

In which your humble narrator describes a trip to Target, ponders that all little girls in Minnesota have the same name and rejoices in the fact that his penury has been, at least temporarily, alleviated.

This morning Child #1, Child #2 and I drove Wife to work. She usually takes our sub-par public transit system as we only have one car and drive as little as possible. Most people seem to view this as an act of environmental extremism and look at us like we're eco-terrorists when we comment that we share a vehicle. Mostly it's because the Wife hates to drive. Also the University where we both work charges for parking at an equivalent rate to many studio apartments.

After depositing the breadwinner at her place of business we zipped over to the super-fancy, giant "T1" Uber-Target to grab some diapers and a few odds and sods. I only brave shopping trips with both children early in the morning if I'm alone. I prefer not to inflict their unhappiness on the general public.  However, at 9:00 a.m. the Evil Mommies are out in full force with their comparatively lesser (in terms of quality, not mass) progeny.  Screaming, red-faced children and exasperated Mommies were having pitched battles all over Target. (Full moon?) Today's three observed fits were all little girls. All named "Ava."

"Ava," a perfectly lovely name was #5 on the social security administration's list of most popular baby names for 2008. It was also the #1 most popular name for baby girls in Minnesota. There are 443 little Minnesota Avas that were born last year. I don't know what the other 440 were doing but 3 of them were having melt-downs of nuclear proportions this morning. Which brings me to two instructional points. First, it's a lovely name, but it's not nearly as original as you think. Second, if you yourself are an obnoxious, whiny person, don't name your kid something heavy on vowel sounds because if you do, people will mock you in their blogs.


Ava: Wahhhhhh! (unintelligible) Wahhhh! (garbled) cookie (?) Mommy! Wahhh (garbled).


Evil Mommy: Aaaaaaaaaaaaa-vuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Sto-o-o-o-o-p Whi-i-i-i-i-i-ning!

And in other news, I picked up another teaching assistant gig for this term. I'm looking forward to being able to eat more than rice and beans this semester.