The history behind the name

The other day, I whined about my name for probably the 4,000th time. Well, my mom reads this blog and she called me up the other day to assuage any trauma I have endured and/or may be continuing to endure (I'm over it now, Mom, honest!). And what she told me was that Clark was the cool dude in the neighborhood when she was growing up. Her term: "A real-life Fonzie".

Okay, yeah, now things make sense!

Well of course I'm named after the neighborhood badass! I should have known! Mom later sent me an email with even more background on the Brooks family names. I haven't run a "Carol's Corner" in a while and I asked if it was okay to re-print her email. She said yes and so here you go...

"Here is more background on your name. Your father and I both agreed that we would never name our kids after their grandparents. My father's name was John but John Brooks is almost as boring as John Doe. The other choice would have been Casper which I think would have been at least 100 times worse than Clark. Your father did not want to name you Charles. He hated the name because of all the nicknames he had over the years. Some of them were Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz, Chuckie, etc. He had an aunt that insisted on calling him Chuckie Charles which he absolutely hated! So Clark it was.



If we had named Connie after a grandmother the choices would have been Mildred or Delphine. Please gag me with a spoon. I had a friend in school named Connie and I just always liked the name. On her birth certificate she is named Connie not Constance. What's the point of naming her Constance if she was always called Connie. Her middle name, Louise, came from a sister of your father that died when she was still an infant due to an illness that I have no details on.


Originally I was going to be named Judy Faye. My father's name was John Francis Rumics and for some reason he wanted his children with the same initials. Aunt Joan was Joan Frances Rumics. Luckily when I was born my father had a boss who had just named his daughter Judy and if my parents had named me the same it would have looked like he was sucking up.So I, Carol Lynn, was named after my favorite aunt, Caroline.


So much for the stories behind the names."

--Carol Brooks (my mom)

Carol's Corner: Grocery Stores

(Something my mom and I have in common; we see weird things happen in grocery stores...)

Today on my lunch hour I decided to go to the local grocery store which is right around the corner. It is a locally owned small chain on the order of Florida’s Publix. I only got 3 items so I went to the quick check out lane. As I am approaching the counter I see a man with a big cardboard box on the counter. I get next to him and see that he is buying a chain saw!! Now, this is just a grocery store chain not a mega store like WalMart. Of course they also had whole boneless ribeyes at $4.99 a pound. Maybe the idea is to get a whole ribeye and the chainsaw so you can go home and slice your own steaks. OK I understand now.

On my way home from work there is a Kroger store which I stop at also. They send out a weekly flier and last year they had a sale on Lean Cuisine dinners. Now the problem I had with this one is that if you bought 10 of the frozen dinners you got ½ gallon of ice cream for free. Isn’t that defeating the whole purpose?

I lead a pretty boring life. I guess that most of my excitement seems to come from the simple task of grocery shopping. Well, I guess we get our thrills where we can.

Carol's Corner: Hooked on phonics

Here's my mom again. I think she's starting to like blogging. It's a healthy way to express your frustrations. I'll bet she wishes she'd had a blog when I was a kid, ha ha!! (shaddup) I told her she can chime in whenever she wants so I'll be listing all her contributions under "Carol's Corner". I'm calling it that because I'm an adult now and I can use the given name of my parents if I want to. Now I have to go because I think I hear one of the cats chewing on my wind-up robot dinosaur.

Hey, it's Clark's mom again and I really need to vent. Clark said I could write anytime so I figured that this is the perfect place.
One day last week I need to fill my gas tank. I pull up to the pumps, get out and find a hand printed sign on the pump saying:

Incert credit card exactly like the picture.

What??
A few years back I saw the following sign in the window of another gas station:

No personal checks accepted. No acceptions.

I work in an automotive manufacturing plant and this winter over one of the men's rooms doors was the sign:

Plese wipe feet.

The thing that really bothered me about this one is that I mentioned it to at least two dozen other people and none of them even noticed the spelling. How can you NOT notice it? These things scream out to me when I see them. I guess that both correct spelling and just being observant are now things of the past.
Okay, I feel better now.

Happy Mothers Day

In keeping with a longstanding American tradition of children giving their moms nothing of actual value for a gift on Mothers day, I am turning this space over to me own dear mum. Ladies and gentlemen, the first guest blogger in the history of this site and also the first woman to ever give birth to me, my mom...



Hi, my name is Carol Brooks and I have the privilege of being Clark's mom. I live in Mishawaka, IN and ship military HUMVEES all over the world for a living. Clark has given me a chance to take over his blog for Mothers Day. Just my chance to get even with him and tell you a few tales about his growing up.
He has a younger sister, Connie. When they were little he had her convinced that she was adopted. He had her so convinced that I had to take her to our library and show her the old local newspaper with the announcement of the birth of a baby girl to Mr & Mrs Brooks on her birthday. He also has a cousin, Mary Beth, whom the family calls "MB". Of course he wasn't happy with that name so he changed MB to "monkey breath". Where did I go wrong?
When he was in grade school I got a call from the teacher about the joke he was telling his classmates: What word starts with F and ends with UCK? His answer: firetruck. What could I say, he was right.
And yes, he really does have an aunt, Joan, and she used to drive a minivan. She knows how Clark feels about minivan drivers so just last week she got rid of hers and now drives a Saturn.
Over the years it has really been an experience raising Clark. I'm not sure the job is done yet. In the middle of winter he loves to call me and complain about how warm it is in Florida! But in the long run he really was a good kid and a heck of a lot of fun with one of the greatest senses of humor of anyone I know. I am proud to be his mom.

And I'm proud to be your sonny boy, mom. Happy Mothers Day. I love you.

PS: I remain unconvinced that Connie is not adopted.