Why Some People Need to be Beaten into a Coma; Parenting Edition

This item appeared in the "crime & police" section of the New London Day:

"Junior Cadet, 22, of 46 Donahue Drive, Norwich, was charged Wednesday with driving with a suspended license, driving without proof of insurance, misuse of marker plates, driving without headlights lit and driving an unregistered vehicle."

You have got to be kidding me. About the only thing that could have been worse would have been if Mr. and Mrs. Cadet had named their kid "Space."

A friend of mine used to work as a city prosecutor. She kept a list of strange names of defendants who had passed through her city's criminal justice system. Some were truly bizarre and most of them were "frequent fliers" though the criminal courts. This might be an urban legend, but there supposedly was someone in Cleveland, a frequent flier whose name was pronounced "shi'thead", but you can guess how most people pronounced it. She seemed to be of the opinion that in some circles, a weird name, especially for a boy, might cause the kid to gravitate towards the dark side of the force.

In some countries, you cannot give your child strange names. It should probably come as no shock that Germany is one of those nations. Denmark is another. I don't think we need to go that far.