It was an ordinary day. Watching one of my all-time favorite black and white television shows, "Leave it to Beaver!" The show ran for a few years beginning in 1957, but is now part of the "MeTV" network which airs back-to-back old episodes every weekday. Most of the episodes I can remember from my junior high school years, but one of the episodes I watched today I couldn't remember ever viewing before. Story about Theodore Clever, known as "The Beaver" who is elementary school age and who gets into trouble on the school bus and gets a letter from the school Principal telling his mom and dad that he can't ride on the school bus for a week due to the fact that he hit one of his classmates over the head while on the school bus.
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| Title shown on TV at the beginning of the show. |
Beav's mom and dad make him write a letter to give to the bus driver telling him how sorry he was for fighting on the school bus. Story also switches to the Beav's classroom where his teacher, Miss Landers, tells about proper behavior on the school bus. All of a sudden, one of her students raises his hand and Miss Landers says, "Yes, Larry." Well, Larry stands up and says something stupid, just as Larry alway does on the show. As I sat in my lounge chair watching the show, something struck me all of a sudden. Why is the overweight, dumb kid on the show named Larry? Did they chose that name because all dumb kids are named Larry? And...why did my parents name me Larry! But then I began to think a bit and realized that one of my neighborhood friends was also named Larry. And...he certainly wasn't dumb. He was always in trouble, but certainly wasn't dumb. And...another kid or two in my class were also named Larry. And...come to think of it, they also weren't dumb. Made me feel better when I realized that "Larry" must have been a popular name at the time and not given just to kids that were dumb.  |
| A picture of "The Beav" on Presidential button. |
Hey, my parents liked it enough to give me that name when I was born. If you have children, what names have you given to them? Names that will make them proud to tell people when asked what their name is, or names that they will hate to repeat to friends. My wife and I have three children whom we named Derek Charles, Brynn Ann and Paul Thadeus. We came up with those names in different ways. Derek Sanderson was one of our favorite professional ice hockey players at the time and was having a great season when our first son was born so we named him Derek and gave him my wife's father's first name as his middle name. Our daughter's name is Brynn which I came upon while watching a quiz game on TV. Thought the name was rather unique so we named her Brynn. Her middle name is the same as her mother's middle name, Ann. Our third child, a son, was named Paul after my father. He was born in 1976, a bi-centennial year, so we made his middle name Thadeus after one of Lancaster's famous heroes, Thaddeus Stevens. Well, it's time to watch an episode of Perry Mason on MeTV. Wasn't one of our favorite shows when our children were born or we might have named one of them Perry or even Della. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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