I’m the oldest of five kids. I have two brothers and two sisters. Further adding to the fun three of us are addopted from southeast asia. In the heat of the moment. My parents both ended up running throught the list of names until they hit the right one Joe, Tony, Maura, Dot, Jim! Some times this list included Smokey, our dog.
This all ended when we heard a Bill Cosby routine which went along these lines. Bill starts out along the lines of this thread saying his parents would get his name confused with his siblings’ names
‘Comer here Tom…Rudy… Frank… rutabaga…
What is your name? And don’t lie to me cause you live here and I’ll find out!’
From then on unless the topic was quite serious, if my parents stumbled once they’d just call us ‘Rutabaga’
Four kids and I do it all the time!! Sometimes I’ll cycle through repeatedly, while my mouth and mind try to get on the same wavelength. The two boys are especially difficult, as in my infinite wisdom, I named them both with “An…”.
“Antho… Andre… Anth… An… Oh you know who you are, and you have until I figure out your name to stop what you’re doing!!”
Maybe I should just call them both “Anne”.
I grew up answering to my sister’s name. She was older and had left the house by the time I was seven, so it wasn’t difficult to figure out who my dad meant. I also had several of her teachers in school, and would occasionally answer to her name in class, much to the bemusement of my classmates.
I just asked my youngest son, and all of his teachers (all of whom have taught his older brother) often call him by his brother’s name. He says that instead of answering, he waits until they can come up with his name.
My dad rarely mixes my name up, but my mom and grandmother will go through many names of female relatives and pets before they get to mine. Just this past weekend I called my mother’s dog by the name of her last dog. When I was angry, I’ve called various ex-boyfriends by my brother’s name.
Did anybody’s mom get angry, and scream FirstName, MiddleName and get those mixed up? I’m kind curious about how this seemingly common memory bug works.