Friday, June 04, 2010

name suggestion

I was at an airport restaurant in Chicago getting dinner while waiting for my delayed flight. A waiter came up and after the usual "What would you like to drink" etc he glanced at my big stomach and said:
Waiter: Boy or girl?
Me: Boy. (I was expecting him to ask what I'd like to eat, so a though crossed my mind that I generally don't eat children for dinner.)
Waiter (pointing at his name tag that said 'Constantine'): You should name him that! It means "born to be a king"! ... Or a waiter. What can I get for you? (Who knows how many times he'd used that joke, but it was still funny.)

After dinner as I was paying my bill:

Waiter (pointing at my name on the credit card): Not many people named that here, but a lot in my country.

He turned out to be from Bulgaria. I happened to spend a summer there about 20 years ago, and it was a beautiful country. I told him so. He went on to tell me about studying Russian as a kid, and that one of his favorite memories was memorizing Russian poetry. I don't know if he was telling the truth. He went on to quote Pushkin for me in very good Russian:

Я помню чудное мгновенье:
Передо мной явилась ты,
Как мимолетное виденье,
Как гений чистой красоты.

We probably won't name our second son after a Bulgarian waiter from a Chicago airport who quotes Pushkin in an unaccented Russian, but he did make an impression.

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