I have an interesting family, to say the least. I have a ball whenever I'm around them. Last month my family and I took a trip to PA to visit some of our relatives. While we were there we stayed in a little apartment (that reminded me of British PBS shows) which was behind kind of an old folks home where my Great Aunt *Sis lives. (Her real name is Florence, something I didn't find out until we visited last month.) The woman is somewhere in her 90s but her mind is sharp as a tack! We would go in to visit for a few minutes only to come out an hour or so later smiling and laughing at all the stories she would tell us. On our last day there we asked her a question. Most of my grandmother's siblings have rather unusual names, and I'm not talking about the names they were given in the 1920's, but the nicknames they gave themselves, like, Fuzzy, Wavy, Bump, John, Sis....etc. I have a Great Aunt John - Aunt Sis' younger sister - and non of us knew why we called her 'John'. Half the time when Sis talked about her she used her given name - Verda - and I had no clue who she was talking about cause until then I didn't know her name was Verda! Well, on our last day we asked the question: "Why do we call her John?" the story that was our answer was pretty funny.
But the story is: Late one night the family was going to bed when they realized the Verda was no where to be found. Everybody is searching for her and kinda freaking out, (Aunt Sis probably was around 16 at this time) when in walked Verda. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!" was the much echoed frantic question. My great grandfather asked her a little more gently, I bet he was amused at the little runaway.
"I was out by the hay stack." was Verda's answer.
"And what were you doing out by the haystack?" My great grandfather asked.
"Talking to the Man in the Moon."
"And what did the man in the moon have to say?"
"He said, my name is John."
And that was that. From then on she was known as John...because the man in the moon told her so.
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