Cher

Peggy’s Prompt for 07/29/09 15 minutes “cherries”

Cherries. Cherry pie. Cherry cobbler. A bowl of cherries. Life is just a bowl of ……Cheri. Cher

Sonny and Cher were part of my early adult years. This was before Cher had her nose fixed and her boobs enhanced and so she looked like a regular person, albeit very tall and very thin and with very long straight hair parted in the middle. Actually, come to think of it, so did I at the time have long straight hair parted down the middle. I share with Cher (a deliberate pun) another characteristic—being known by one name. There have been so few other Gwendies in my surroundings (usually none) that one name suffices. And I didn’t have to get a nose job, a boob job, and stand on the stage making sarcastic remarks to my goofy partner either.

So isn’t it interesting that many generation after humans began giving everyone two (or more) names (such as Martha Gwendolyn Roberts Duncan Camp) to distinguish them/us from all the other Pedros, Williams, Bridgets, and Pierres, now it’s more prestigious if you can be instantly identified by just one name, a la Cher. Also Obama, Mandela, Kissinger, Garbo, Iacocco, Faulkner, to mention but a few. And it matters in what era you are living. Forty years ago, Armstrong meant Neil Armstrong, who walked on the moon. Today it would be Lance Armstrong, who has probably pedaled his way to the moon. Notice that these are all last names, though.

But for first names, like Gwendie and Cher—you can add Golda (Meier), Madonna, Brittany (do I really have to give the last name?), the list is shorter. Even Michael (Jackson) has to share recognition with Michael (Jordan), and you never know whether it’s Bill or Hillary when you say Clinton.

Anyhow, I sure my mother never set out to make me unique because of my name, but that’s how it turned our and I’m glad for it. Just me, and Cher and Obama and the other important one-name people.