My son's namesake

Dear Readers,

As some of you might have noticed, DadWagon has added a new category to the site recently: link bait. This is our sorta catchall term for posts that are really just about internet trends or stories related to parenting, but not really about our parenting lives (media, for those of you who are curious, is where we criticize other professionals).

Some highly popular posts recently written by Matt, in my humble opinion, should have been categorized under that rubric, but have failed to do so. I’m talking about Matt’s new interest in hardcore pornography (please see, here, here, and oh yeah, baby, right here). To me, if you’re writing about “adult films” on a daddy blog, you’re either making a seriously profound statement about the nature of parenting and Western Civilization, or you’re trying to drive a bit of traffic our way. More power to you, Matt, my boy–way to take ’em for the team.

Anyway, Matt’s last foray into this—dare I say it—meme (that’s right, I’m putting it in itals as if it were a foreign-language word; try to stop me!) was in his “Open Letter to Sasha Grey” (link above). Matt’s daughter shares a first name with the famous porn actress and existential philosopher, and he would like her to, I don’t know, I guess, change it?

Fine, fine, fine. All well and good. However, Sasha ain’t the only one who shares a name with a famous person. Now, the initials mean something different, but what intelligent person would fail to think of JP Morgan whenever he or she meets my son? And why not? If the shoe, metaphorically speaking, fits, then go ahead and buy the position long, short the market, and hell, while you’re at it, overthrow a third world nation (not done by Morgan, I think, but hey, I’m riffing here). To wit:

He often had a tremendous physical effect on people; one man said that a visit from Morgan left him feeling “as if a gale had blown through the house.” Morgan was physically large with massive shoulders, piercing eyes and a purple nose, because of a chronic skin disease, rosacea. His deformed nose was due to a disease called rhinophyma, which can result from rosacea. As the deformity worsens, pits, nodules, fissures, lobulations, and pedunculation contort the nose. This condition inspired the crude taunt “Johnny Morgan’s nasal organ has a purple hue.” Surgeons could have shaved away the rhinophymous growth of sebaceous tissue during Morgan’s lifetime, but as a child Morgan suffered from infantile seizures, and it is suspected [by whom?] that he did not seek surgery for his nose because he feared the seizures would return. His social and professional self-confidence were too well established to be undermined by this affliction. It appeared as if he dared people to meet him squarely and not shrink from the sight, asserting the force of his character over the ugliness of his face. He was known to dislike publicity and hated being photographed; as a result of his self-consciousness of his rosacea, all of his professional portraits were retouched.

The resemblance to my sweet little preschooler couldn’t be more clear. Oh, and as to Matt’s assertion that having the same name as a notorious public figure could lead to negative repercussions in the schoolyard, I say, JP (either one) just let ’em try! My boy will buy and sell the lot of ’em, frame their carcasses like fine oil paintings, and hang them in a museum dedicated to his ego.

Or we could just call him by his first name.

Sincerely,

Theodore