Anyways, people ask how we named him Milo and I don't really remember how the name came up. My friend has a son named Milo, but I didn't even know her before thinking up the name. My best answer is the name was inspired by... (dum dum DUM)
Yes, Saved By the Bell! Except I couldn't find a picture of Milo, the token teacher from junior high who was too much of a pitifully marginal character to even have his own cast photo. I do remember watching an episode with Miss Bliss talking to Milo a few days before I was in labor, so he made an impact on me if no one else.
But I think I'm going to change my baby naming story. A few days ago while at Phoenix coffee shop, a lady asked if I named my son from the main character in The Phantom Tollbooth. I said no, but I loved that book as a kid and I completely forgot there was a Milo in there. So I looked it up when I got home.
Lo and behold...
------Chapter I: Milo
"There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself — not just sometimes, but always.
When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered. Nothing really interested him — least of all the things that should have.
'It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time,' he remarked one day as he walked dejectedly home from school. 'I can’t see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February.' And, since no one bothered to explain otherwise, he regarded the process of seeking knowledge as the greatest waste of time of all.
As he and his unhappy thoughts hurried along (for while he was never anxious to be where he was going, he liked to get there as quickly as possible) it seemed a great wonder that the world, which was so large, could sometimes feel so small and empty."
I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.
I frickin' love The Phantom Tollbooth. There's a great passage about distraction and wasting time that I used to have on a sticky note on my computer, but now I can't find it.
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