“I guess you’re what people would call eccentric, Lamont.”
“Pot/kettle you weirdo.”
“Seriously, Lamont. Even people on Twitter think your name is eccentric.”
“It’s a great name. It means ‘the mountain’. I chose it because…”
“That’s not the name your most recent human parents gave you?”
“No. Of course not. Shudder.”
“What’s your real name?”
“My real name is Lamont. You don’t even have a name.”
“I do. It’s not my fault no one uses it. It’s Geoffrey. Geoff.”
“Ah. I see why you go by Dude.”
“Nothing wrong with Geoff but, you know. But LAMONT???”
“We’ve been quarantined too long, me thinks. Here you are, referring to Twitter as if anything that happened there had meaning and here I am making fun of a name some random humans gave you when you were born. This can’t be good. Shouldn’t we be discussing the absurdity of human-centered reality and the arrogance of the species as it goes willy-nilly into what it calls scientific investigation? Shouldn’t we be offering some pithy yet searing social criticism based on our multi-millennia existence?”
“That’s your job, Lamont. Looks like the museum is going to open this summer, though. Fingers crossed.”
“You miss your smilodon gig don’t you, Dude.”
“Yeah, I miss the kids and I miss the Zen of cleaning tar from paleontological fragments in the shipping container they call my lab. I do. I miss that stuff.”
“You know the beaches are going to be very crowded once everything opens up again.”
“They were crowded before.”
“True.”
“What are you going to do, Lamont? Try to redeem yourself with Oprah, or?
“I don’t know, Dude. Something interesting will turn up. Always has.”
~ ~ ~
Lamont and Dude are characters I came up with a few years ago. They have the uncanny ability to remember many of their past incarnations which gives them a unique perspective on life, the universe and everything.
“Summer is the season of inferior sledding” - Inuit proverb 
Good couple of characters I enjoyed that!
Hehe! There are some doozies of names out there . It often makes me question the sanity of the individuals bestowing the names on the unsuspecting infants… I had a boyfriend in HS whose father went by D.C. I made the mistake of asking him what DC stood for. He responded that it stood for Darling Charming – except on weekends when it stood for Damn Cute. It took a little bit of sleuthing (before internet) to find out his dad was named Delbert Carroll. Seems Darling Charming was a better choice!
Poor Delbert.
Name choices can brand a kid for life. I remember some parents in India last year named their twins Covid and Corona. Think about how that will go in the years to come. Anyway, I enjoy your Lamont and Dude stories. They’d make a great short story book complete with pen and ink drawings. 🙂
Oh no… Now you’ve done it. They’ll be bugging me to do that forever…
😁 but it’s a great idea!! (if I do say so myself).
😀
I don’t think there is any redeeming Lamont after that Oprah performance. Thankfully. 🙂
No he went too far for prime time…
Yep.