Namesake

In an effort to convince a former student to name her new dog after me, I told her this amusing but true story. About six years ago my DJ partner, Bengi, and I worked a wedding for a couple who we liked very much. Fun-loving people who were easy to please.

A few months later we saw this same couple at the wedding of their friend, who had also hired us. As a DJ, it’s always nice to see former clients and catch up on their lives, and this couple shared a particular bit of news that was most astonishing.

Upon returning home from their honeymoon, they purchased a dog and decided to name it after me because “we wanted to name our dog after the funniest person we'd ever met.”

Think about that for a minute.

Not only did the couple name their dog after me (the funniest person they'd ever met) but my partner’s name is Bengi. They could’ve named their German Sheppard after a guy whose name is actually the same as one of the famous dogs of all time, but they went with my name instead.

Isn’t that the best?

But the story gets better.

A year after their wedding, the couple separated after the bride fell in love with her husband’s best man. The bride kept the dog, and she and the best man moved into an apartment in Newington, which just happened to be the apartment directly below the one that I was living in at the time (and the one that Martin from SOMETHING MISSING would one day inhabit).

The apartment had been previously occupied by an Indian family, and since I despise the smell of curry, I was extremely happy to see them leave.

But I was even more surprised to see my former client move in with her husband’s best friend.

And with the dog named after me.

So for about six months, until Elysha and I moved in together, I was living above my namesake.

Matty the Funny DJ was living above Matty the Dog Named After the Funny DJ.

Unbelievable. Right?

My own dog, Kaleigh, didn’t like the dog very much. He was large and barked quite often, and on more than one occasion, I found myself yelling down the stairway, issuing commands like, “Shut up, namesake!”

But the dog was named after me. I couldn’t help but love him.