Drewlyn

With Lyndsey out of the country in South Africa I feel a lot of pressure to keep the blog going! It's only the second week and I don't want to slack on our goal of one post per week. Work is amping up here and that is the typical pattern of university counseling center work: a few weeks of quiet that pick up as midterms arrive, chaos between midterms and finals, and then being able to hear a pin drop during finals week. At Stanford they have a culture-based syndrome called "The Stanford Duck Syndrome" where students like to present as collected, calm, and capable on the surface, but their little duck legs are working double time under the water to keep the duck afloat. It's been interesting to watch.

I also wanted to give some background on the origin of the name "Drewlyn." It may seem obvious to a modern reader, but it actually was a bit of a mistake. First, you should know, growing up, until the very end of high school, I went by "Andrew" rather than "Drew." In high school, a few friends started calling me Drew and I felt like it fit, so in college I began introducing myself as Drew and asked my family and friends to try to transition. I still answer to Andrew, but it takes me a second to remember to answer to that name. (As a sidenote, Lyndsey used to call me "And," which I always liked, but it was also confusing because of how frequently the word "and" is used in everyday conversation).

When we were small and our mom had to address the children as a unit she would often call us 'Lyndrew.' This name makes sense because both names share the n-d combination and it follows our birth order. I can't recall the times it was commonly used, but I feel like written communication was often shortened to Lyndrew. How endearing, you might think, as you envision these Children-of-the-Corn blond siblings answering to a single name.

Well, along comes the advent of the internet with dial-up modems and when everyone had America Online to connect to the world wide web. And one day Scott tells us we are getting the internet and he will set it up for us. And, oh the thrill of the internet! Who knew the untold joy that might come from being able to connect with information and people from around the world. (Who knew how dependent on the internet we would become -- I've already checked my several key email accounts several times since starting to write this blog...). So, I remember how proud Scott was to have set up the account and have us on the internet and we run to the computer to see our very first screen name:

DREWLYN.

"Drewlyn...?? Dreeewling?! Droolin'?!! That's not our nickname! Our screenname means we have drooling problems!" No appreciation for the hard work involved, just shock that we would have to email everyone from a capitalized name that reminds everyone of salivation! Oh, the dismay I'm sure we displayed. (Sorry, Scott, we were brats.)


But somehow, we forged ahead and we able to develop our own screennames, but DREWLYN remained the "master account" and somehow stuck with us. And it was the only name that seemed to fit when we were looking to name the sibling + dog blog.