Banzai Tron Burnett

Ever since we announced that I was pregnant, the first question people have asked us was, "What are you going to name the baby?" The reality of actually being pregnant hadn't even sunk in to our heads, yet people were full of suggestions for names.

Now that the doctor has confirmed that it is going to be a boy, people are certain that we've named the baby already. Which we haven't. We talked it over, and we decided to keep the name, if we do happen to choose one early, a secret until the baby is born and we've officially given him the name. That way, no one can say, "Eww, why did you pick that name?" even if they really, truly don't like it. Also, the we won't have to suffer the consequences of changing our minds, in case we do.

We do have a few names that we are contemplating, but we really have this funny habit of changing our minds and making decisions at the last minute. For example, in our last house, we installed wood flooring. We were absolutely set on a light colored pecan for about a month. When we went to the flooring store to confirm our final order, we walked in the door, saw a medium colored pecan that we both loved and immediately changed our order to that color. A few years ago, our first rescue puppy was named "Twinkie" for a couple of weeks, until we brought the second one home and couldn't bear to call him "Ding-Dong," even though he kinda is one. So the names were changed to "Mocha" and "Java," after Dan's love of Starbucks coffee. Obviously, we can't go around randomly changing the name of our kid, so we'll have to think this one through carefully.

Being of the stubborn mind types, Dan and I hardly ever agree on anything. My mom came to visit us once a long time ago, and she opened the refrigerator and laughed. "Why do you have both Pepsi AND Coke?" she asked. I like Pepsi and Dan likes Coke, and neither one of us will relent and give up our favored soda and pretend to enjoy the other soda more. After my mom looked around the kitchen at our two different loaves of bread and our various selection of breakfast cereals, she stopped asking questions, but I could see her shaking her head and hear her giggling at us. Given our agreement to disagree, it's come to deciding on the temporary nickname of the baby, and, as you can imagine, it's become quite a discussion.

Dan came up with the idea that the middle name should be "Tron," not so much like the 1982 Disney movie "Tron," rather as a suffix to make the first name sound cool, powerful, and most of all, technological. We are keeping in mind that our kid will be the product of a academic book nerd and a computer techie nerd, so the only reasonable way to keep the kid from getting beat up in the schoolyard is to give him the name of a big tough robot. We're particularly fond of "Vol-Tron," especially because it's usually followed by "Defender of the Universe," at least in the minds of people who are familiar with the 80's cartoon. A friend suggested "Super Tron," another more recent comic and several international technology companies that we aren't familiar with, but the name, Super Tron Burnett, has a nice ring to it.

When I set up the blogspot site, both voltron.blogspot.com and supertron.blogspot.com were taken already. I did some research on the Internet for interesting sounding names that ended with "tron," and I happened upon this long lost Transformer named "Banzai Tron." Although I am disappointed that he was a Decepticon (one of the Bad Guys), I really liked the nod to my Japanese ethnicity plus the alliteration of "Banzai Burnett." It also reminds me of what I call my dad's hobby of working with miniature trees in containers "Banzai," even though I know it's incorrect. My dad's hobby, of course, is working with "bonsai" trees, even though many Americans mispronounce it "Banzai," which is a samurai battle cry. I call my dad's miniature tree hobby "Banzai" to annoy him, because he knows he's taught me better than that, and can't help but correct my "mispronunciation" every single time.

Dan and I haven't agreed on the temporary name quite yet, but I change between "Belly Burnett" and "Banzai Tron Burnett," and Dan uses "Vol-Tron" and "Super-Tron."