Mom wrote the name Sydney Patricia Straub on my birth certificate and kept it that way for two weeks, but at the last minute ran down to the Dover, New Jersey courthouse to change it to Patricia Sydney. She wanted me to be named Sydney, but the Catholic Church didn’t approve. Besides, Dad wanted the name Patricia after some secretary at his work. But Mom really wanted Sydney. So she wrote it down for two weeks before she chickened out.
The Catholic church wouldn’t allow to be my godfather this divorced man named Art Hyco, who had a German shepherd named Mozart, so at the last minute some proxy stood in for my naming, and my godparents became some pen pals in Sydney, Australia that Mom had never met. My godparents, Babs and Harry Foster send me all these funky gifts for Christmas from down under, like a purse made out of Koala bear fur, or a commemorative plate of the Sydney Opera House, or a Waltzing Matilda shirt with a old bearded guy wearing a silly hat with corks hanging on it on one side and an Australian map on the other, or an aboriginal doll named Bindi. Bindi is pitch black, as dark as dark chocolate, with brown blinking eyes that stare like a psycho killer, and she came with a little aboriginal outfit, but I lost it. She had a paper boomerang with BINDI on it rubber banded around her hand, but I lost that too. Now we use it as a voodoo doll for our Halloween costumes.
“Australia,” my Dad says, eating a Sambal sandwich, looking at the Australian stamp on the back of a postcard the Fosters sent.
“Did I tell you I almost moved to Australia?” I shake my head no. “After the camp was liberated, I wandered from camp to camp trying to find my mother. I couldn’t find her and I didn’t know where else to go, so I came back to my camp. The Red Cross was advising everybody to go to Australia, so I took the first hand of the man I saw and said, ‘I’m going with you.”
My parents ended up calling me Patti. And it’s spelled Patti with an I, not a Y, so I have to correct everybody who writes it and it’s hard to find for me a license plate or coffee a mug in the souvenir stores because they only have PATTY, so I have to go with PAT or PATRICIA.
Some Arab men came to my first-grade class to talk about their culture. They were writing the class’s names in Arabic and when I said my name Patti, they said, “Potty? Potty?” with quizzical looks on their faces. And other kids call me rice Patty, or hamburger Patti, or Patti-O, or Peppermint Patty or Patty cake. Or I get the dreaded Patty fatty. Or they rhyme my last name Straub with Snob or Slob or they say I’m Patti Stroft because of the Northern bathroom tissue commercial on TV. “It’s not strong and it’s not soft, it’s STROFT.”
Nancy’s middle name is Nancy Ann. Jeanie got the full Catholic naming of Jean Elizabeth Rebecca, Albert’s middle name is William, but Mom shortens it to Albert Billy, which he hates. “Albert Billy, Albert Billy, come and eat. Albert Billy Albert Billy, cut that bushy hair!”
Mom says that her mother’s name in Czechoslovakian is Milada, but it got changed to Mildred. “It sounds terrible, like mildew or mold,” she says. My mother changed her name from Agnes to Ann, because she hates how the Ag in Agnes rhymes with gag, sag, nag, hag, bag and rag.
The Catholic church wouldn’t allow to be my godfather this divorced man named Art Hyco, who had a German shepherd named Mozart, so at the last minute some proxy stood in for my naming, and my godparents became some pen pals in Sydney, Australia that Mom had never met. My godparents, Babs and Harry Foster send me all these funky gifts for Christmas from down under, like a purse made out of Koala bear fur, or a commemorative plate of the Sydney Opera House, or a Waltzing Matilda shirt with a old bearded guy wearing a silly hat with corks hanging on it on one side and an Australian map on the other, or an aboriginal doll named Bindi. Bindi is pitch black, as dark as dark chocolate, with brown blinking eyes that stare like a psycho killer, and she came with a little aboriginal outfit, but I lost it. She had a paper boomerang with BINDI on it rubber banded around her hand, but I lost that too. Now we use it as a voodoo doll for our Halloween costumes.
“Australia,” my Dad says, eating a Sambal sandwich, looking at the Australian stamp on the back of a postcard the Fosters sent.
“Did I tell you I almost moved to Australia?” I shake my head no. “After the camp was liberated, I wandered from camp to camp trying to find my mother. I couldn’t find her and I didn’t know where else to go, so I came back to my camp. The Red Cross was advising everybody to go to Australia, so I took the first hand of the man I saw and said, ‘I’m going with you.”
My parents ended up calling me Patti. And it’s spelled Patti with an I, not a Y, so I have to correct everybody who writes it and it’s hard to find for me a license plate or coffee a mug in the souvenir stores because they only have PATTY, so I have to go with PAT or PATRICIA.
Some Arab men came to my first-grade class to talk about their culture. They were writing the class’s names in Arabic and when I said my name Patti, they said, “Potty? Potty?” with quizzical looks on their faces. And other kids call me rice Patty, or hamburger Patti, or Patti-O, or Peppermint Patty or Patty cake. Or I get the dreaded Patty fatty. Or they rhyme my last name Straub with Snob or Slob or they say I’m Patti Stroft because of the Northern bathroom tissue commercial on TV. “It’s not strong and it’s not soft, it’s STROFT.”
Nancy’s middle name is Nancy Ann. Jeanie got the full Catholic naming of Jean Elizabeth Rebecca, Albert’s middle name is William, but Mom shortens it to Albert Billy, which he hates. “Albert Billy, Albert Billy, come and eat. Albert Billy Albert Billy, cut that bushy hair!”
Mom says that her mother’s name in Czechoslovakian is Milada, but it got changed to Mildred. “It sounds terrible, like mildew or mold,” she says. My mother changed her name from Agnes to Ann, because she hates how the Ag in Agnes rhymes with gag, sag, nag, hag, bag and rag.
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