-- Winnie the Pooh
Most late mornings, I'm a "bit out of sorts and feeling a little eleven o'clockish" but not today. Today, at precisely eleven o'clock, I had the privilege of meeting Yoycie, Carmen, David, and Agnes. Yoycie was the grand prize winner in my blog give away art contest, and today was the day that I finally delivered her painting. We have talked back and forth through the Internet but had never met face to face. She's amazing. We had an absolutely wonderful visit despite the late morning hour. Up until today, in referring to her, I had called her Joyce. Once, after I mistakenly replied to an e-mail calling her Joy instead of Joyce, she said,
Don't worry about the misspelled name, I'm used to it, and I'll answer to anything. When I grew up my relatives called me Joyce, Yoycie, Joy, Joycita (variations on my name); also Evelyn, Shebe, Sylvia (Shebe's real name), and Zelda (those are three of my aunts, whom I supposedly resemble). Oh, and John . . . that was my brother's name but my mom was usually so frazzled that we didn't expect her to ever get our names right.After watching her and being around her for maybe half an hour, I looked at her and said something to the effect that, to me, she looks (and acts) like a Yoycie. She laughed and said that for whatever reason, the people in her neighborhood when she was growing up in San Antonio couldn't pronounce her name correctly...so instead of calling her Joyce, they called her Yoycie. The oddest part about that was that she had a dog named Yankee. The very same neighbors who had trouble pronouncing the J in her name, had no problem at all calling the dog Jankee....because they couldn't seem to be able to pronounce the Y in Yankee!
The whole story reminded me of this particular blog post on the pronunciation of names. Thank you, Yoycie; I had a great time!
(Carmen and David are Yoycie's precious three year old twins, and Agnes was a mother's helper.)
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