When I was eight years old – when we were in the midst of discussing your name – it suddenly hit me that I didn’t know Daddy’s middle name.

While I thought “what is your middle name?” was a simple question, Daddy turned it into a game…a game that somehow lasted for a full week’s worth of car rides (leave it to Dad to somehow get as much mileage as possible out of a joke…).

I spent hours guessing middle name possibilities…all of which he’d respond to with some iteration of a sly smirk, “no…,” “not even close,” “maybe,” “I hate that even more than I hate my actual middle name,” “I wish” or “guess again.”

Finally worn out from the days of guessing, he relented with an anticlimactic “Louis.”