Fortune of reversal

Good morning, and Happy United Nations Day. May all your days be multicultural and full of varied perspectives. And food - lots of good, different food. Is it lunchtime yet? Damn.

There's a topic that I've had on my list of Things I Should Write About Someday, and since nothing else has struck me this week as a topic, why the hell not? That's the entire reason for having a TISWAS, right? So here goes.

Back when computers were just coming out and well before Al Gore's invention made it to the mainstream, my friend Jason S. seemed to know absolutely all there was to know about the new-fangled technology. Typewriters were so old-fangled. Jason knew how to play games on his computer, which if you recall, was a big old pain in the ass. Most games seemed to require inserting a series of big floppy disks and typing the correct commands into the DOS prompt. I can't for the life of me remember those exact commands, but I recall a lot of colons and needing to know what drive corresponded with what letter. It was stupid-complicated.

One afternoon, I went over to Jason's house. He eagerly beckoned me to the office/computer room and said he wanted to show me a new program. We waited the five minutes or so for the big box to turn all the way on, and then he did the requisite typing to pull up the program. Something that looked like an EKG appeared on the screen, and trying to contain his smile, Jason pulled a little microphone toward him. "Hello, Peter," he said into the microphone before reaching down and pressing a button. "Watch this," he said next, and after some more button-pushing and mouse-clicking, the computer speakers came to life. "HelloPeterHelloPeterHelloPeter," the computer said in a high-pitched and very parrot-like voice. He typed and clicked more, to which the computer replied, "Helllllllllllllllooooooooooooo Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeterrrrrrrrrrrrrr." He tried showing me how the controls allowed him to manipulate pitch, speed, the ability to loop the file, etc., but I only understood about a third of it.

It still felt like he was holding back a little though, and my hunch proved to be accurate. "And then there's this," he said as pushed a few more buttons and clicked the Record icon. "Urrrd nay mock niew," he said. "What?" I asked (and rightfully so, I believe). Still smiling and not answering, he clicked a new button that I hadn't seen utilized yet. The speakers spoke again, and in Jason's voice, they said, "Wing Commander." It took me a second to realize what he had just done, but I got it. He taught himself how to say the name of his favorite computer game backwards. We had played the game a lot over the previous months, so it's understandable why it was on his mind. He played the sound again for me, backwards and forwards. He had it down perfectly. It wasn't like it was saying, "WIng COMMandER," but rather in perfect English.

Naturally, I had to get in on the action. My whole life, I'd said my name backwards as "Reh-tep," never paying attention to the actual sounds involved. So I was surprised when "Peter"backwards actually came back to me as something closer to, "Urrr deep!" I thought about it and realized that the T in my name really did function as a D. I almost felt like I'd been cheating myself, but I got over it quickly. Within a minute, I was pretty good at turning, "Niiilk urrr deep!" into something very close to "Peter Klein." My "Wing Commander" still sounded funny, but I didn't have the hours of practice under my belt that Jason did.

This program remained our favorite pastime at his parents' house for a little while. We looped things, said dirty things, and made high- and low-pitched voices tell us how cool we were. We toyed with the idea of calling someone and having a deep voice say funny things, but it was too hard to predetermine the course of the conversation. We also tried recording parts of Beatles songs that were backwards in an effort to hear them forwards (by playing them backwards). As it turns out, "Miss him miss him" (in regards to Paul being "dead") sounds the same both frontwards and backwards. Tell a friend.

As a side note, if Ringo is the next Beatle to pass away, then my irony radar will certainly go off. Because then, the only remaining member of the band is the one who they pretended was dead decades ago. I'm just sayin'.

Fast-forward about 8 years. You there yet? Cool. I'm a senior in college, living with five of my best friends in a shitbox that happens to be right on the ocean. Our friend Dave is a big computer guy who had earlier blown our minds when he brought home a cd burner. "Wow," I thought, "it's like copying a cassette tape but with cds instead!" It's hard to imagine how revolutionary that was for me back then, but trust me when I say that it was. On another day, he casually brought out a microphone and mentioned that he had a program that could do funny things with sound files. Naturally, I was all over this.

"Watch this," I said. I leaned in, pushed the red dot signifying "Record" and said, "Urrrd nay mock niew." I clicked a few buttons, and out came, "Wing Commander." I started laughing, but no one else joined me. "Uh, why do you know how to say 'Wing Commander' backwards?" So I told them, figuring that would clear everything up. "But that was, like, 1990! Why do you still remember that?" Ah, good question. The only response I had was that...well, I remember things. And honestly, what's weirder, the fact that I still knew that or the fact that both my friend Dusty and my lovely wife would be able to say "Wing Commander" backwards upon request in 2008? They weren't even there, but this is a part of their vocabulary too because of the many times I've said it aloud.

We had some more fun with Dave's more modern version of Jason's sound recording program. One of our roommates named Scott James was in the room with us. I thought for a couple of seconds, leaned in to the mic, and said, "Smayj Tocks!" "SCOTT Jamessssssssss," it replied. Nailed it. I think it's a good thing that I didn't own the program, because it's highly likely that I would have done nothing but play around with it for days on end. I'm pretty confident that I would've learned entire sentences backwards, eventually leading to the preamble of the Constitution or something similarly nerdy. That's how I roll.

And I also roll myself on down to the Car Watch!

I was behind a car this week that had this plate: "JUPETR." I'm going to give the driver the benefit of the doubt and say that this is regarding the fifth planet from the Sun and not in fact a way to differentiate me from similarly-named gentiles. "Which Peter learned the Gettysburg Address backwards?" "Jew Peter."

My homey Rockabye sent me a very interesting license plate: "I(Heart)AJEDI." How sad is that? It's a very easy way to tell the world, "I'm not only a geek, but a delusional one at that." It's like the high schoolers who claim they're dating someone who none of their friends have met or spoken to. "Oh, he lives in Canada," they say. Actually, I once knew someone who took this way too far. She said her boyfriend was a model, and she cut out pictures of him from magazines. No real pictures of him, of course, just magazine ones. Then she had a party at her house and the boyfriend was supposed to attend. Everyone was excited because no one believed her. As the hours went by, the guests became more eager to hear what her excuse would be. She "called him" around 10 and he "said" he was running late. It was getting tense, and the Cuban Missile Crisis parallels are so evident that I'm sure I don't even have to spell them out for you. At around 1:30am, we left without getting to meet the illustrious "boyfriend." Sure enough, she told us the next day that he had stopped by around 3am. We turned to a friend who had spent the night over there. "Did you meet him?" we asked excitedly. "No," she said through gritted teeth, "He came over right after I fell asleep." Riiiight.

The same homey Rockabye also saw a car with a "UCLA School of Dentistry" frame and a plate that read, "HPPYDDS." Now it's probably supposed to denote "happy," but it's much more fun for me to imagine a hippy dentist. "Whoa man, when you breathe in this gas, man, you'll totally see all the, like, colors and stuff man. It's far out, man. Open wider please."

Ok folks, that's it for your friendly neighborhood Peter. Let's dole out some happies, shall we? Happy Birthday on Sunday to my friend Alicia, Happy Half-Anniversary on that same day to our friends Candice and Scott, Happy Birthday on Wednesday to my friend and former colleague Regina, and Happy Half-Birthday to my Grandma Mu on Thursday. I'll be back here next Friday with more words formed together to represent my thoughts. You can't spell "represent" without Peter, after all. Have a great weekend and week, friends. You can always reach me at ptklein@gmail.com in the meantime.

Naming rights and wrongs

Hey hey hey, everyone. Today is not only Thursday, but it is also the first day of summer, so slap on your sunscreen and get out there. Not content to only be two things, today is also my buddy Rockabye's half birthday and my 3.25 wedding anniversary with my lovely wife. Wow, June 21st, you've really outdone yourself. Bravo.

Ooh, I love it when this happens. I was all set to write about something else, but my introductory ramblings have led me to a tangent that may sustain the entire post on its own. 'Tis a glorious Thursday indeed, gentle readers.

In honor of summer, I am compelled to mention a name from my past. I attended Pinecrest Elementary School in Van Nuys with one Summer Winters. A very nice young lady, her parents decided to make a statement when naming her. Namely, "We're hippies." I guess they mellowed slightly by the time her younger brother was born, because they opted for Cole as his name. I have a theory that they almost went with Cold, but someone talked them into altering it at the last minute.

Gentle readers, I'm going to be blunt: I expect a lot of comments on this post because everyone - everyone - knows or knows of people with strange or funny names. Just a week or so ago, I was sitting with some folks at dinner when one mentioned knowing a Paige Turner. That name could totally fly under the radar if you're not paying attention. Same with Alexa Kahn, who I've mentioned once before in this space. I'm not entirely sure that her parents know they named her after a reference book.

While working in the university system, occasionally boredom would lead me to look through the names of students who had passed through those halls before and after me. Two in particular stood out that I can still recall. One was someone of (I can only assume) Native American descent with the last name of Broken Leg. With a space and everything. The other was a guy named Klondike Steamboat Steadman. A Google search for that name tells me that I remember the spelling correctly too. To me, those are just cool names, and I'm sure you have some to share with the rest of the class.

There are many names that sound good in one's native language or country that don't quite work out so well here. Those are rather unfortunate and are not the faults of the parents at all. For example, who knew that upon moving to the U.S., the name Titiporn wouldn't sound as pretty? That's a real tough one, because I can't even think of a nickname she could go by to ease the transition.

Speaking of nicknames, there are some names out there that make you say, "Come on, you had an option to go by something else there. What the hell is wrong with you?" I worked peripherally with one Dick Bush, for example. You're telling me he couldn't save himself half the giggles at his expense by choosing "Richard" or any other nickname for it? Honestly, man.

Somewhat off topic but in the same ballpark, I've met a pretty high number of people named after months. There has been a January (who went by Jan), an April, May, June, August (a guy, which surprised me), and a December. A Julie too of course, but I don't think that counts. Can any of you fill in the gaps there? I know Valentine's Day is in February, but I sure hope people aren't named that because it's not the prettiest word out there. Hmmm, October Klein has a nice ring to it. He could go by Toby...I like it. Do people named after months have to be born in those months? It would seem so, but I can't imagine all of the Aprils in the world were born in that month. Then it just gets confusing. October "Toby" Klein though...I really think I'm on to something here.

Writing about this topic reminded me of something: I was one of those people with a weird name to some people. Please allow me to 'splain you. My junior year of high school, Dusty and I were somehow hanging out with a group of young women that were all friends of our friend Jon's friend. Basically, that means we didn't really know any of them at all. We were all hanging out and laughing, and somehow it led to one of the ladies asking what my last name was. "Rabbit," I said matter-of-factly. They all started to laugh. "Go ahead, laugh. I've heard all the jokes already. My parents were cruel, get over it," I said with a completely straight face. They stopped laughing immediately. One girl spoke: "Holy shit, your name is really Peter Rabbit." They dropped the subject after a minute, and seizing the opportunity of being in front of dumb and gullible people, Dusty and I proceeded to talk about his made-up movie career. It was a great night.

About six months later, I was telling that story to a small group of people. Afterwards, one person said, "Wait, I've heard about you." "What?" "I went to school with those girls; so you're the Peter Rabbit they talked about?" I was thrilled that they bought it so completely, and honored that they had been telling other people. Of course, being a teenage boy, I then immediately started worrying about what they were saying about me, but that's beside the point. I was famous, and with a fake name to boot.

So, my most gentle readers, have at it. Who knew a Candy Barr? Who knew a September Jones? I want double-digit comments with this one, because I just know you have a funny name in your brain dying to get out. Let it go, friend, let it go.

I'll see you here tomorrow for my (gasp) 20th FUF piece. And remember, ptklein@gmail.com is just a click away for anything about anything.