06 June 2008

The power of a name

I keep a couple of laser pointers on hand for my Boss to use during presentations. Whenever I lend him one we have the same conversation as he is testing it about not blinding the accounting staff who work at the opposite end of the hall from me. The other day, however, we were playing the light along that wall and I started joking about seeing if we could make the accountants chase after it as my cat does.

Then I got a great idea.

"We need a kitten!"

"A what?"

"A kitten! If you have a laser pointer, you ought to have a cat around to chase the light dot. We could get a kitten and give it a really cool radar name!"

"There are no really cool radar names."

"Oh yeah? We could name it Swerling."

He thought. "That is a really cool radar name."

"I know!"

And then he thought - for the barest second - that maybe we should get a kitten for the office and name it Swerling. Common sense, tragically, prevailed.

But for that brief moment I nearly got to have a kitten at work solely because I thought up a good name for it.

2 comments:

Maureen said...

Well, even if the boss had OKed it, you probably would have learned that at least one of your colleagues is deathly allergic to kitties. Too bad; it would be nice to have a resident cat to chase the light.

Anonymous said...

What about Skip Skim, Flash Dance, or Puff Ball, which are the NATO names given to, respectivly the radars sets for Yak-28p, the Mig-31 and a surveilance radar fitted to the Tu-16. Those seem like reasonable kitten names that are also radar names.