xp_logs | Paige & Dani - baby names! (Reply)

Dani has begun the Quest for a Baby Name! So far she has a lot more she hates than likes.

Dani sat in one of the plush library chairs idly flipping through a book of baby names, trying to kill some time. So far, it wasn't dying fast enough. She was bored and her homework was not being done, despite having the books on the table in front of her.

"Whatever you do, don't phone my mother and ask for name advice," a voice said, before there was the solid thump of books being dropped next to Dani's. Paige followed suit, falling into a chair across from the young mother-to-be. "She'll just tell you Elizabeth, or a variation of it."

"Elizabeth?" Dani repeated closing the book, "Why Elizabeth? Jay only mentioned one Elizabeth in his comment."

Grinning, Paige raised a finger, accenting her point. "Ah. But he didn't mention that I am Paige Elizabeth and my younger sister is Joelle Lisa and that's only because we had some far off ancestors that according to tradition we had to be named after. Liz was the first girl Mama actually could give the name to. Then my daddy forced her to stop before she scarred us for life."

"Aw, now that ain't right," Dani giggled, she knew quite a few people who would have done something similar, "All I know is that I ain't naming it Grace, Hope, Faith or Lilly."

"Ick," Paige agreed, giving a mock shudder. "Flower names never did it for me. Violet? Rose? Daisy? No, I'm good thanks. And where I came from, every second girl was some sort of virtue. Struck me as sort of wrong myself. Setting up this unreachable possibility of perfection."

"And what's with Apple? Who names their kid after a fruit?" Dani asked, waving the book around, "Or places. I ain't Tallahassee Higgens."

Paige giggled, putting her elbow up on the table so she could rest her chin in her hand. "Can you imagine? Someone naming their kid Mango? Oh, those poor souls," she said, shaking her head a little. "I can see naming a child after a place if it's really significant, like say if, and this might just be me watching too much daytime television but, you were forced to leave your country and you name your baby after your home town. However, if your hometown happens to have an ugly name, all of those rules go out the window. I don't care if you were the President of your former town, you don't give your kid an ugly name."

Laughing Dani shook her head and propped her feet up on her books, they were good for something! "Watonga ain't a persons name, that's for sure. I dunno. What happened to good, strong names, repectable ones? Like we got. This book I found," again she waved the book to punctuate her words, "it seems to think that stars and things and heaven-knows-what are good names. Like here," she flipped through the pages and indicating one, "Cheyenne ain't a name! It's a damn tribe!"

"Supposedly they're boring. I mean, I know every boy and their dog has the name Michael, but I still like it. The one time I tried to deep and meaningful I suggested the name London. Jono laughed at me. I think I'll stick to what I know," Paige replied, rolling her eyes good naturedly, but there was something in her posture that adjusted a little as she realized what she'd said. London.

As Paige spoke she had changed suddenly from a what Dani called a cool pink/blue, although she knew not to mention pink in the other girls presence, to nearly a gray/white, Dani tilted her head to one side, trying to figure out just was said to upset Paige, "Your guy's from England, ain't it?"

Trying to act casual, Paige nodded, her fingers idly running along the spine of the her textbook on the bottom of the pile. "That he is. It's a pretty nice place. Rains too much, though. My hair was a giant frizz ball the entire time we were there," she said, keeping her tone as light as possible.

"It does?" Dani asked sensing the tension and trying to shift the conversation, "I ain't ever been there...ain't been on a plane actually. Maybe one day."

"Yep. And of course no one brought an umbrella," Paige replied in a conversational tone. "And you will. We travel a lot here. Fieldtrips, or special occasions, what have you. The Professor believes in learning by seeing and doing as well as the more conventional way."

Dani nodded, she'd noticed that, what with all the special project classes that people seemed to have instead of regular classes, "What about Jared?" she asked, skimming another page in the book.

Paige paused, her head tilting slightly as she ran that through as a possibility. "Jared. Jared Moonstar. I like it. No repeated sounds or clashing vowels and a nice name to boot."

"Yeah..." she wrote it on a pad of paper in her engineering notebook, "Beats Apple. But I could have more kids and name them after more fruit and call them my fruit salad," she paused considering, "They'd hate me for life."

"And possibly murder you in your sleep out of revenge. Children have such delicate psyche. One little thing, like a bad name or seeing their mother killed by their father and they go off the deep end," Paige answered dryly, using her rare dry sense of humour.

"Delicate, right," Dani agreed rolling her eyes, "Next thinkg you know they're writing tell-all books, going on Oprah and have their own fad diet."

Paige shuddered, making a face and drawing back. "Ugh. If I have one more person tell me I'm not allowed to eat bread, innocent people are going to be injured. How am I supposed to make sandwiches if I can't eat bread? And if I don't have sandwiches, how am I supposed to eat and type with my free hand? It makes no sense. These people clearly have no solid understanding of the nerd brain."

Blinking Dani tried to compute what the blonde girl had said. It wasn't working. "Sandwiches are good?" she replied hesitantly. "Phinneas? Ew."

"Sandwiches good, phinneas bad," Paige agreed with a solid nod, crossing her arms. "If by phinneas you mean that thing that I have no idea what they are."

"It's a baby name. No."

Paige nearly fell of her chair, making a disgusted face. "Oh god! It sounds like a strange Mexican dish. No. Any name that reminds me of tortillas and salsa is bad."

"Mmmm...salsa sounds really good," as if on cue, her stomach rumbled. Smiling, Dani gathered her books into her bag and stood up, "Snack time."

"All right. I'd join you, but I actually did come here to study, you distracting girl you. The contents on my desk have sort of mutated to take over the entire surface and I'm afraid to move anything lest it attack," Paige said, grinning.

"Good luck with that," Dani nodded, heading off.