Do You Know What Your Name Is?

Do You Know What Your Name Is?

A Guest Commentary By

Bubba Leroy Smuckpucker II

I really love this Internet age since Miss Shoalanda has allowed me to say my piece and made me famous, but I guess not everone has been so lucky. Take my friend Billy Ray Collard. Billy Ray's grandpaw was also Billy Ray (God rest his soul). Then along came Billy Ray Jr and my best friend in school Billy Ray III.

Just about the time we graduated from Dog Ear Junior High, Billy Ray's grandpaw died. It was the biggest funeral Dog Ear Holiest of All Churches had ever seen. After a coupla years, Billy Ray Jr. decided to just drop the junior from his name since he figured his daddy wasn't comin' back. My pal Billy Ray graduated from Dog Ear High and made everbody proud by goin' to junior college. He took a course in weldin' and just moved on up from there.

Then Billy Ray made his mistake. He took his certificate in weldin' down to the pipefitters union hall and signed on. It seems the officers at the local were just good ol' boys and Billy Ray was afraid a moniker with a "III" after it wouldn't get him very far, so he registered as "Billy Ray Collard Jr."

The local sent him over to the nuclear plant in the next county where Blackheart Special Ops Construction (no job too small or too dirty) had a contract. Billy Ray didn't have no problem gettin' the job since the only bad thing on his record was pullin' the fire alarm in 7th grade. Boy we had fun that day lemme tell ya. Miss Nohalter the gym teacher was so scared she called up her girlfriend and proposed.

Well, Billy Ray just kept movin' up in the ranks of Blackheart until last week. It seems his daddy done somethin' pretty bad. I get mad just thinkin' about it, so we won't go into details, but lets just say I hope he goes away for a long time, him callin' himself a preacher on weekends and all. The arrest report just called him Billy Ray Collard, but when some news people looked into his credit records and all they discovered he was a junior and used that name in their stories.

Then Homeland Security over at the nuclear plant read the stories and put Billy Ray III on suspension. Looks like they woulda saw his age and picture didn't match, but I guess they thought better safe than let a good candidate for blackmail work there.

I hear he's got it all cleared up now, but it seems like a good lesson for all of us. Check out your online listings and get 'em corrected if they're wrong. I have and I didn't know there were so many ways "Smuckpucker" could be misspelled. I hope they don't hear about that down at the Dog Ear Rotary Club.

*****

Shoalanda