I like cheese

July 26, 2009

My son's name is C.J. It stands for my wife's father-Charles, and my father-Joseph. My wife always wanted to call her son CJ, and since going with JC seemed way too religious or retail, CJ it was. We play with the name as you do with someone your are familiar with. My wife calls him Siege as the letters get merged together. With that you can very easily be "under siege" when he is doling out one of his smashing hugs. I also started calling him Charlie Joe on occasion as something different that was also casual. To call him Charles Joseph made it sound like he was in trouble. He has not adopted too kindly to any of these previously used nicknames. However, we have been surprised of late by the latest name I have come up with and how he seems to be going along so far.

I was making a sandwich the other day and spruced it up with some cheese. My favorite kind is Colby Jack cheese, and there it was, the initials CJ. Well, I couldn't wait to start calling him Colby Jack. I think it would be great if he could talk his future wife into naming his son Colby Jack. It would take some slyness to first talk her into the name Colby-which isn't completely far-fetched. Then he would just have to work on the Jack angle. If he could start to date a girl with a father named Jack, I might get all tingly inside anticipating the possibility of having a grandson named CJ-Colby Jack.

Since even nicknames need to be shortened, and I can't call him Colby Jack in public, it seemed much more logical to just call him Cheese. Well, CJ has frequently used the expression "I like cheese" whenever we are goofing around making illogical statements out of nowhere. That stemmed, incidentally, from the movie "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" when Willie's grandparents were shown lying in their bed and one of them just blurted out "I like grapes" for no apparent reason. The movie came out during a work period of my life when I was working from 3:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon. Whenever I would make it home, I would usually climb into the bed. My son used phrases to describe me with his friends, one of which was that I was nocturnal. My wife and he also thought it was funny to start calling me Grandpa Buckets. I am not sure where he would get the notion to start handing our nicknames like that. In reality, I was rather impressed with that one. It also brought on the need to occasionally blurt out nonsense phrases. I would go with the more conventional "I like grapes", whereas CJ decided to go with "I like cheese".

Anyway, as we were riding through Northern Kentucky today (I kept my promise to take my wife to the gym over there), we passed the Newport Levee where events take place frequently on the weekends. On one of the upcoming weekends, my son announced that there would be a Gouda festival. True facts revealed that it will actually be a Goetta festival (which is a type of sausage native to the Cincinnati area I think). My wife did correct him on this. He has heard about the Goetta festival and is interested in any festival involving food. I do believe that Newport also has a Gouda festival some time this year, so he may get his wish sooner or later for a festival in his honor-all about Cheese. CJ admitted as we drove on past, "I think it was an honest mistake as Cheese is my first and middle name". "Gouda one", my wife said. Aren't they clever. :) He better be careful, this one may stick.

Until he calls the county....