Warping Childhood One Name At A Time

COWORKER: (pulling books out of the book drop) Aww! Amelia Bedelia! I loved Amelia Bedelia as a kid!

AMELIA: Really? People liked her? I have always hated her with a fiery passion intense enough to fuse hydrogen atoms into helium.

COWORKER: Aaahowwwwa!* You don’t like her? Why not?

AMELIA: Well, for one thing, we’re talking dumb as a bag of hammers, and I’ve never been patient with the type of idiot who takes language so god damn literally.

COWORKER: I thought she was funny!

AMELIA: Fair enough. But, perhaps more to the point, you probably didn’t have every single grownup who knew your name think it was clever and cute to call you “Amelia Bedelia.”

COWORKER: … I really can’t argue with that.


Ah, the indignities suffered upon small people because grownups thought they were being cute. Good thing I had The Other Amelia with which to distract them. That story was more interesting, anyway.


*I have never been able to correctly render this noise, but you all know it—it’s the sympathetic sad noise a girl makes when you, say, kick a puppy.