Goat gotten

You can only get someone's goat if they have a goat to be gotten. I don't remember which preacher told me that, but I heard that sometime ago, and put it in my memory bank, and just now remembered it.

I may have gotten some folks' goat with my BLOG on names. Sorry. I like strange names, but not really strange names.

For instance, I have a grandson and his name is Shandon -- not Shannon (Irish name I think), but Shandon. It's an unusual name, and I knew that would be his name long before he was born because it is his father's name.

Now, there's an interesting tale -- Shandon - the father -- didn't particularly care for his name at one point in his life. He was a young teenager. We were having a weekend retreat with a few other churches that weekend and it was being held at our church. Everyone was required to wear a name tag. Shandon decided his middle name Matthew (shortened to Matt) would be better, but he didn't want to do away completely with his first name (Shandon), so he wrote on his nametag: S.Matt (no space between the dot and Matt). Frankly it looked like his name was Smatt, and that's what he was called all weekend -- and is often called that to this day by his mother-in-law.

So, I do apologize to those who might have taken offense about my ragging on folks who don't use ordinary, boring, usual, commonplace, run-of-the-mill, uninteresting, dull, lackluster, unexciting -- I could go on and on -- names for their children and would rather use extraordinary, unusual, different, unexpected, surprising, atypical (again I could go on and on) names for their children. It's their choice, not mine.