1736. The child can decide

When Valerie and Kent’s first baby arrived in this world they had trouble deciding on a name. Valerie wanted a transgender name such as Kim or Les; an accepted and known name but one that belonged to both females and males. Kent also wanted a transgender name but one with a bit of originality such as Oak or Marble or Peninsula. The child could decide once old enough what it wanted to be called. In the end Kent won out and they provisionally named the child Reverberation Mannequin Crenshaw-Maidstone.

The child was given a naming ceremony, but Valerie and Kent had trouble deciding where that should be held. A church, of course, was out, but the grounds of a park next to a lake with ducks and swans and weeping willows sounded good. In the end the park idea verged on Pantheism, so they invited a few friends around to their back yard and held the ceremony next to a tin fence. The child could decide once old enough what it really wanted to believe and from the beginning Valeria and Kent, by choice of venue, didn’t want to precondition the child into receiving and believing perceived hang-ups.

As the child grew and reached school age, Valerie and Kent decided against formal school education; they would home school Reverberation. A school would shove the child into stereotypical confinements. Although the government demanded certain topics to be covered in the curriculum, Valerie and Kent didn’t want to ram bigoted information down Reverberation’s throat. The child should be able to decide once old enough what interested it and what it should and shouldn’t know.

All this was years ago. These days Reverberation is a professional athlete and goes under the more practical name of Organic Fire. Organic is a lot easier to spell than Reverberation; and Organic’s partner, Zen Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Ng, doesn’t have to look up how to spell Organic’s name every time an application is made for psychiatric hospital visitation.