my way

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/33gUgZA

in another volume of the Noisy Neighbor chronicles– yes, the newish ones who’re renovating the house or something, were singing Ave Maria, pretending to fall off ladders, and with a crying baby– as Dude and i were eating dinner just now, they were playing (quietly) Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” on an underpowered radio or someone’s phone, and singing along to it with great enthusiasm and sincerity and uh not so great competence.

I took a video that you have to turn way up to hear but oh boy does it convey it. I put it in my Instagram stories https://www.instagram.com/stories/bomberqueen17/2393984577481076534/, that’ll be up until like 6:45 Weds, Instagram makes them go away in 24h unless you highlight them and I don’t think I’m gonna be adding that to any of my highlights.

“So,” Dude said, “I had a crisis the other day.”

“A crisis,” I said.

“One of the guys over there, he’s constantly yelling Eyyy Lorenzo.”

“Yeah? Who’s Lorenzo?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Dude said, looking harried. “What if… what if Lorenzo is the baby?” I blinked at him, and he gestured emphatically. “I cannot handle the concept of a baby named Lorenzo. Who names a baby Lorenzo.”

I had to hand it to him, in this time and place, it would really be something to name a helpless tiny baby Lorenzo.

“Eyyy, Lorenzo,” Dude said morosely, and I got up to take the dishes back into the kitchen. Next door, the song came to a crescendo, and there was only one guy still singing along with it and oh boy he could not hit that note but boy did he try.

(Dude keeps saying, very quietly and sadly, “eyyy lorenzo” at various intervals.)

Comments

[light_of_summer]

Re "Who names a baby Lorenzo":

Do I remember correctly that these neighbors are Hispanic? If so, I'm thinking that Lorenzo is a fairly ordinary choice—it's the Spanish version of Lawrence, and it's a Saint's name, right?

I'm guessing that someone in the baby's family tree prayed to San Lorenzo for help, and got a good outcome. Might've been generations back, with later generations adding new Lorenzos, who were named after earlier relatives, as well as the Saint.

I mean, if I were naming a baby, I don't think I'd pick Lawrence or Larry or Lorenzo, but my favorite Aunt and Uncle named their first son Larry, and I had a lover for awhile whose given name was Lawrence or Laurence (I forget which—he went by a completely different, self-chosen name).

So, the name was probably in pretty common usage in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when those two guys were born to English-speaking parents. If either of those guys had reproduced, it wouldn't have been particularly surprising if the name were reused, three generations later.

I hope that helps console you and your Dude for baby Lorenzo's naming 😉 !

[dragonlady7]

Oh, no, these neighbors are one thousand percent Buffalo Italians, we're about four blocks away from the traditionally-Italian neighborhood. Buffalo Italians, for the record, are a distinct breed, quite different from just regular Italians, and even from Italian-Americans. There's a real distinct accent, and part of that accent is that it can only be pronounced at a shout, which is part of the charm of these neighbors.
Dude grew up here, in this neighborhood, and so grew up surrounded by this particular Buffalo subculture, which I find a charming one but he's-- well, he's got good and bad experiences with this. He grew up Buffalo Catholic, see, which is like... there's a Venn diagram and mostly it's Irish, Italian, Polish, and he's in one of the narrow slivers that's none of those, and doesn't get a lot of room to itself, and has to Deal. (Buffalo Irish is if possible More So than the Buffalo Italians, which is saying a lot, but their neighborhood tends to be south of the city, so while it's not possible to avoid them, it's closer to possible. Being of Irish extraction myself I thought I could handle them but Ding Dong I Was Wrong, it is crucially Different and I could not keep up one bit.)

This is a wonderful analysis you've done, of the origins of the name and what it could mean, and I do appreciate that, but much of Dude's objection to the name is that he is a prissy white American who hates it when neighbors make noise and I am recounting this largely to tease him about it.
(Also, and I can't blame him, it's partly being gunshy from a lifetime of Buffalo Italians coming into small spaces and being extremely loud at him, they do that a lot, and he has a particular horror of it.)

[light_of_summer]

Ohhhhh, OK! Thanks for explaining—it makes much more sense to me to be upset about people being Loud Near Me than about people naming a baby Lorenzo.

I grew up in a quiet household, in a mostly-quiet neighborhood—the most frequent sources of annoying neighborhood noise were two particular barking dogs and a young guy with a loud motorcycle—and I still tend to be uncomfortable when I'm around people whose culture includes significantly louder speaking voice norms. I'd be horrified to be stuck Dealing at close range with an accent that can only be produced at a shout.

In related Internet discovery trivia, it looks like there are about sixteen Saints whose names are variations on Laurence, Lawrence, and Lorenzo, plus several more Blessed-not-yet-Saints. At least two of the Saints were from areas that are now Italian, and one was Irish.