Mylow

Today I saw a picture of a kid with the name "Mylow". Hey. Who knew Milo was a popular enough name to get its own special spelling?

I knew about the name Milo since I was a kid and read the book The Phantom Tollbooth. It's about a kid named Milo who drives his little car through the phantom tollbooth and then goes on all sorts of philosophical adventures.

I didn't want either kid to have a super popular name because I grew up with a name like that and it was a pain in the neck. In fact, from 4th grade through 12th grade I went to school with another kid who had my first and last name. We were always sort of vague enemies on principle. She wasn't a great student. Sometimes I'd get letters warning me that I was in danger of failing a class that I wasn't even enrolled in. In the fall of my senior year, no joke, my high school actually sent her SAT scores to my first batch of college applications.

There was a period in the 80s when lots of people named Amy would use alternate spellings. I started having to clarify that my name wasn't spelled "Aimee" and such. Huh. Never thought I'd see "Mylow". Actually, that's kind of an awful name, now that I think about it. My low.

Speaking of Milo, tonight he bit Nora on the back, hard, and broke the skin. OMG WTF. That was definitely Milo's lo.