It’s the season for 40th birthday parties at the moment. I’ve gone to a few lately, then again, once you hit a certain age, lately stretches for a couple of years so, you know, don’t bank on the accuracy of my assessment… anyhooooooo, at the last one I attended a guy with a video camera came up and asked me to give a video message to the host.
“Happy Birthday, Miles. Damn tasteful of you to have your 50th birthday on the 50th anniversary of the recording of ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis…” I smile, then pretend to hear someone off camera say something so I can do an embarrassed backtrack, “What? Not 50!? It’s his 40th? Jesus!” (Somebody stop me, oh my sides.)
Birthday boy was within earshot and came over and said, “Actually, I was named after Miles Davis.”
“So that observation of mine is not terribly original because it is a genuine connection and you’re probably going to get that same sort of message 30 more times tonight, I would imagine,” I answered.
He politely opined that he probably wouldn’t, and then followed up with, “I got it really confused when I was a kid, but it worked out okay. When I asked my parents why I had been called Miles, they told me that I was named after a musician. I misheard them, though. When people would ask me about my name, I would proudly say that I was named after a magician. That was actually kind of cool in primary school. It wasn’t until I went to secondary school that a teacher, when told the story, sat back and said that he couldn’t think of any famous magicians called Miles. I checked with my parents and sure enough, musician. But by then I was in high school, where it’s definitely much cooler to be named after a musician rather than a magician.”
If you’ve got cloth ears and you’re called Harry, you’ve got a whole world of options open to you.
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