School Drive

It's the first full week of August, and school is back underway. V is a big middle schooler, which to him means the freedom to mill about aimlessly before classes start in the morning, severely limited recess, and authority to use the sandwich press in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Two positives to one negative -- not bad.

He was initially upset with the combination lock instructions, being given a combination with numbers like 18 and 32, and a lock that DOESN'T EVEN HAVE THOSE NUMBERS! Once I translated 18 to "go to 20 and then 2 more ticks" and did similars for the other numbers, it was clear as could be. He worked on it over the off days and had his opening time down to 13 seconds before the first day of school.

First day of school picture, 2017

Drop off for his school is through a neighborhood with streets named for tennis stars from an era before I started watching tennis. I have fond memories of watching Björn Borg and John McEnroe play, so the streets were named a really long time ago. Ham Richardson is my favorite. What parents would name their baby boy "Ham?"

The only streets I didn't have to Google are Rod Laver and Chris Evert. For Chris's street, I have to think that someone in the early 80s made an effort to find a female tennis player worthy of street naming. They could have gone with Margaret Court and hidden the fact that this street was a decades-late addition, but no one thought of that.

The name is also a clue to when the street was commissioned. In the early 80s, she was Chris Evert Lloyd. I know she was married to a skier named Andy Mills later. And then didn't she marry Greg Norman in the 2000's? I'd look that up, but I already spent an inordinate amount of time trying figure out how to do the ö in Björn, so I'm going to leave the Us Weekly caliber research to you readers.

If I'm ever in charge of naming the streets in a subdivision, I'm going with the most mundane nouns I can think of:

• Shoe Polish Lane
• Grip Tape Way (inspired by tennis names, I guess)
• Talcum Powder Drive
• Crushed Limestone Circle

I could keep going. I'm not sure why this amuses me as much as it does. "Come over to my buddy Ham's house. He lives at 444 Talcum Powder Drive." I'm rolling.