And they shall call him ...

When I very first started humor blogging, I kept our personal life fairly anonymous. Well, as anonymous as I can be while sharing things like finger painting with a poopy diaper and getting stuck in a closet. The Daughters were still very young and, while they didn't know at the time to be embarrassed by their antics, I knew that one day they would be embarrassed. As I wrote my first story (about driving down the street in my minivan with the doors wide open in February), I couldn't figure out what their catchy online monikers should be, so I wrote Daughter 1 and Daughter 2. Then I forgot to figure out a  catchy moniker for each of them and hit send. The website I was writing for published it and "The Daughters" were born ... well, you know what I mean.


At that time, The Dad worked for a private organization which we fearfully called "The Firm." Often times, when we wanted to talk about politics or civic activities which were strictly frowned upon by the firm, we'd crank up the radio and whisper our thoughts for fear that Uncle Eddie would hear and report us. So, I called him The Dad to keep The Firm from knowing it was our family. It made sense. If I were Momma, then he was The Dad.

Eventually, I moved out on my own as a blogger, got my own site and my following grew and grew and pretty soon, people I didn't even know were reading my blog. The Dad left The Firm and went back to the world of public education. By that point, I had referred to him as The Dad for so long that most people knew him as The Dad.

Most.

About a year or so ago, I got this email from someone I didn't know:

Hi! I really like your blog, but I'm confused. Is The Dad YOUR dad or your husband?

Then I got this email from an entirely separate person I did know:

Every time I read about The Dad, I think you're talking about your dad and that kind of creeps me out.

Creeps you out? Yeah. Me, too.

Also? Context clues, people! CONTEXT CLUES!

With those emails in mind, I decided to actually give The Dad a name in my manuscript. In the first book TMI Mom: Oversharing My Life, The Dad's stories aren't too bad. I feel like they'd be crystal clear (maybe) that he was not MY dad.  But, the second book, Fooling Around (which has been critically acclaimed as the Fifty Shades Of Married-With-Kids Sex book) (alright, it was critically acclaimed that by me) I wanted it to be clear that The Dad was NOT my dad.

I decided that I would change my writing.

Finally, he would have a name and his name shall be ... Brian. Okay, okay. I didn't make that name up. It's really his name. I thought it would finally put an end to the extremist emails.  And then I posted my sneak peek last week.

And I got this email from someone I don't know:

Heather, Did you know that in your sneak peek you called The Dad "Brian" and not The Dad? Do you need to correct that?

Then I got this text from someone I do know:

CHECK THE BLOG! You just named B!

Then I got this email from someone I know:

Whoops! You made a mistake. You put Brian's name in your peek show.

Then I got this email from someone I know:

Hey! My name is on the blog. What if I get embarrassed? What if people figure out it's me? What if I do something weird and you blog about it and you call me by my real name?

I emailed back:

Hey, you let me use your real name and I'll let you come with me on the book tour. We'll get a room with a vibrating bed and mirrors on the ceiling.

This writing thing really is hard.