WIT, WISDOM, and STUPIDITY
(because everything in this world is one or the other.)
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This is the history of one of my names.
Say this word:
LEIF
I'll bet $50 that you said leaf. Admit it. Didn't you? Ah ha! Thought so.
It's supposed to be pronounced layf, not like the thing that falls from the tree. Leif is my middle name, for those of you who don't already know it. Or forgot it, it's not easy to remember being so uncommon.
The wierdest part about this is that if you do not already know the word, it is impossible to pronounce. I can walk up to people (or my dad, really, as his first name is Leif, which is more likely to be asked for than my middle name) and tell them that my name is Layf. They'll say, "Okay, Leaf, how are you?" Sometimes I even say, "No, it's LAAAAAAAAAAYF. The AAAAAAY sound." but usually I just let it slide. Even my dad does. The wierd part is that nearly every book on him wants to call him Leaf. But that's just not his name. My family has been saying Layf for generations that can probably be traced back to Leif himself. Just a little anecdote you might have wanted to know.
Leif is a Scandinavian name, as you might have guessed. My family is (supposedly, there's no proof but we're very sure) related to Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red (what creative names they had? Erikson, woah, that's clever.) Erik the Red, as you might know, was this great Viking dude. He went around discoverin' things like Greenland and Iceland, which incidentaly could switch names and make more sense, because Iceland is pretty Green and Greenland is pretty Icy. Erik the Red did that on purpose to make all the Vikings move to Greenland and stay off his nice little Iceland island. Well, Leif was his son and grew up to be an explorer. He was sailing west and chanced upon America somehow, and he founded Vinland. He went back to tell his dad, but his dad was pretty upset because Leif had become a Christian and old Erik thought that Leif was gonna convert everybody. He was right, and Leif converted pretty much everybody except Erik. He later sailed back to Vinland and met some Native Americans and made peace and took their goods and animals and got in a big fight, so they sailed back to Greenland.
Because he discovered America, Leif got the nickname Leif the Lucky. Our family today is still very lucky. We've won a ton of raffle contests, and sometimes I get these random psychic thoughts about what happens next, and it happens. It's wierd when it does. But oh well. Leif Erikson is related to me, and my family is lucky, and don't call me leaf.
Oh yeah, it's pretty funny than Leif was the son of Erik, but in my family Erik is the son of Leif.
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