Matt is proud to announce the birth of 1999 Chevrolet Prizm.  Prizm has his father’s headlights and power locks, his father’s automatic transmission, parking brake, glove compartment, and rear-window defroster, and also his father’s air conditioning and AM/FM stereo.  A mutant gene resulted in power windows and a CD player.  The mother declined to identify herself or her contributions, but may have had something to do with Prizm’s 62,000-mile odometer reading.

After a month’s hard labor on Matt’s part, the birth attendants decided to extract Prizm surgically through the checking account.  Fortunately, there were no complications, except for a continued checking-account discharge expected to last up to two years.

As you might know, my name is Kris. And I’m a guy. It’s short for Kristoffer. (Actually, if you’re reading this, you most certainly know these things unless you are very unobservant, as 110% of people reading this are either a friend, relative, or both.)

But I just found something out — Kris is a girl’s name.

A big part of my job includes inviting people to speak at conferences. And nobody knows who the hell I am. Here are some recent e-mail replies I’ve gotten (rest assured, I do sign my e-mails with my actual name, “Kris”).

This one is, after 27 years, beyond expected:

Hi Chris,

It looks OK to me.

Nobody spells the name “Kris” with a “K”. So that author is forgiven.

Weirder is this:

Hi Kevin. I submitted . . . that I thought would be widely popular.

He probably just mixed me up with my brother Kevin. Who he’s never met.

Still weirder is this:

Kim:

I would be pleased to present . . . in Denver.

All I can think is that he read “Kris,” thought “girl,” and then just replaced the name with whatever he thought I should be called.

These are from two different authors:

Karen, No problem on the revision.

***

Karen -

Agreed.

I should really take the hint and go by “Karen” from now on.

Finally, here are two replies (in chronological order) from the same author:

Kris,

Please include the following in your upcoming enewsletters . . .

Yes!

Kevin,

Can you confirm you received this and you have what is needed for the next enewsletter?

No!

I’ve thought about this for way longer than I should’ve: She knew I was a “Kris” through e-mail, then we spoke on the phone, she heard (from my manly voice) that I was of the male persuasion, then (who’s heard of a boy named “Kris”?) she changed my name to Kevin.

Obviously.