Baby names, Surfing, and Foreign Languages

Just a brief sampling of the conversation during lunch today:

If Lainie Liberti could have had her way, her 9-year-old would have been named Miro, following in the footsteps of other single-name monikers like Prince and Madonna. But for a country that gave us such quirky baby names as Apple and Story, Lainie faced an uphill battle with the hospital, who seemed to determined to squash her attempts at creativity. In the end, Lainie grudgingly added a last name – only to find that numbers were a no-no, too (she had to change Miro’s middle name from 7 to Sevin). C’mon, fruit is allowed but numbers aren’t?

I chewed in awkward silence for about five minutes as Lainie gushed about butthole surfing, saying nothing even as increasingly disturbing images of wrinkled old men on surf boards flashed in my head. It was only when Lainie pulled out a CD from a cupboard that I realized we were talking about Butthole Surfers, with a capital B-S, not butthole surfers, the latest addition to the world of beach recreational activity (joining the tried-and-true skinny dipping and nude sunbathing).

Speaking of B-S: at one point, conversation digressed to languages, where Sarah taught us all the expletives she could remember from her high school American Sign Language class. She also taught us “Don’t stick your finger up your nose” in French, proving once and for all that, yes, you can say absolutely anything in French and it will sound like you’re saying, “Darling, you look ravishing and I want you right now, on the kitchen table.” Not to be undone, Aldis, our token Latvian, blessed us with a few lines in his mother tongue and Tuan Ching carried us through the different intonations of Chinese.

And with that, it was back to work!

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