Maiden names, national anthem and a camp

It's Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer and time for the traditional emptying of my notebook.

Let's get started.

• I'm amused by the fact that we to refer to a woman's name from before marriage as her "maiden name."

I say that routinely. It makes little sense.

In saying, "maiden name," we imply that every woman was a "maiden" before she married. That indicates that she skipped around a meadow, holding a bucket of milk and . . . I don't know, doing maiden things.

"Maiden" is such a 17th-century word. We've stopped using almost all other similar words (gallivant, fizgig, poltroon, consumption), but we still say "maiden name" to indicate a woman's last name before marriage. It flummoxes me.

• The number of good restaurants in downtown Suisun City is impressive. The redevelopment of the marina area still seems unfinished, but there are more than a dozen restaurants in walking distance of the water. It's the best concentration of good restaurants in our area.

• I love America. I am grateful for the military. I'm proud that Travis Air Force Base is in Fairfield.

But I don't understand why Americans came to the collective decision that it's disrespectful to the military when someone doesn't show proper respect to the national anthem.

You can make the case that it's disrespectful to our nation. But why is our national anthem ("land of the free, home of the brave") particularly directed at the military? Why do announcers at professional sports events say things like, "to honor America and our men and women in the armed services, please join and sing the national anthem?"

Again, no disrespect for the military. It's intended as a question of why we feel our national anthem – which is for our entire country – is specifically about respecting the military?

• By the way (and don't think I'm disrespecting the military when I say this), "America the Beautiful" would be a much better national anthem than "The Star-Spangled Banner." It has more details that are specific to the United States and is significantly easier to sing.

• If I had only one call to make (after being arrested or being held hostage), I probably would call Tom Shane. He's a friend of mine in the diamond business.

• I rarely write about politics, but here's something worth pursuing to bring about more teamwork in Washington, D.C.: Make members of Congress attend an annual, weeklong camp. You know, like a youth camp.

Imagine how much better Reps. Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi would get along if they were on the same water-balloon-volleyball team or if Sen. Mitch McConnell had to do a "trust fall" with Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best: Require attendance at Camp Tip O'Neill every summer for every member of Congress.

• Let's keep this between us, but I have a section of my office cubical wall devoted to the snarkiest comments on my columns. My fear: Mrs. Brad secretly logs on to the Daily Republic and posts comments under one of those pseudonyms.

• A final thought: Public construction sites should be required to have signs telling us what's being built, featuring an artist's rendering of the finished product.

That would save us speculation on what's being built and would create a form of public art during construction.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Get off your hobbyhorse and hear this sad tale

Sometimes a painful memory jumps out of nowhere to smack you upside the head. You're suddenly 2 again, wondering why your sister bullied you.

That's what happened to me while reading about a new sports craze in Finland.

People there, particularly young girls, are participating in what they call hobbyhorsing – a "sport" where competitors race through a course of hurdles and barriers while "riding" a stick horse. They also parade around on their stick horses, trying to look regal.

Yes. They're mimicking the Olympics sports like dressage and show jumping.

While straddling a pretend horse, the kind of toy that most of us leave behind when we enter kindergarten.

Video disseminated by The Associated Press of a championship event (!) showed exclusively young girls. No boys. No adults. It looked like (and may have been) video from an all-girls middle school event.

They weren't riding horses. They rode stick horses!

It was ridiculous. Girls running around (some "galloping," in an apparent effort to appear more real) in a gymnasium while hurdling and dodging through a maze. Kind of impressive, in a way, but . . .  then my memory came. Again, as it has over the decades.

I once had a stick horse, a story I previously told in this space. My sister is 2½ years older than me, which seems unimportant now, but was very important when I was 2 and shared a bedroom with her. She was twice as old as me!

The stick horse was one of my favorite toys, a beloved red-and-white steed that "carried" me around the house while I shot with my fingers at various people. My sister knew I loved Old Red (a name I'm giving it now, to make it seem more beloved). She probably resented it. At least that allows the rest of the story to make sense.

Because in a moment that is indelibly impressed on me (and which I repeat at nearly every family gathering), my sister took my stick horse, made it into a bridge between our parallel twin beds and bounced on it.

And bounced.

And bounced.

Until Old Red broke.

I was heartbroken. My sister broke my favorite toy, with no good reason. She apologized, saying it was an accident (my 2-year-old self rejected her explanation, having seen her bouncing on it). My parents taped up Old Red and I resumed my daily patrol around our home, albeit on a horse that would never be the same.

I loved Old Red.

I loved him so much that had my sister not broken him and had I been born decades later as a girl in Finland (granted, those are three major changes), I might have been one of the hobbyhorse racers.

Also, had she not broken Old Red, my sister might not have tried to appease me years later (after repeatedly hearing this story) by buying me a replacement.

I was an adult. I eventually got rid of it, a decision I now regret because it's obvious what I should have done for revenge.

No, not to compete in a Finnish hobbyhorse event.

I should have cut off the stick horse's head and had one of my nieces or nephews place it on their mother's bed while she slept.

Message sent.

Without the nonsense of a fake Finish sport.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

A depressing look at how I rank friendships

Making friends can be hard. Ranking them is tougher.

When you make childhood friends, the evaluation method is simple: You (ideally) have a best friend, then others. You sometimes rank friends: A best friend, an inner circle (relatives, school mates, neighborhood pals, etc.) and  a larger group of acquaintances. But you have a best friend.

It's easy. When I was 9, my best friend was Troy, my next-door neighbor. Anyone who knew us knew we were best friends, forged out of a shared interest of being the youngest siblings and living close to each other. We built a fort together. We made up nicknames for each other. We were best friends.

Fast-forward 15 years.

In your 20s, you have friends and colleagues.  In my early 20s, I wasn't so concerned about who was my best friend, but which of my friends would be in my wedding. For me, it wasn't particularly tough: When Mrs. Brad and I married, I went with the guys I saw regularly and who I trusted. I picked three buddies, my future brother-in-law and a pseudo little brother. Troy, by the way, was long gone.

Fast-forward 10 more years and the friend-ranking world changed again.

By my mid-30s, my rankings focus was different. It was now a question of who would raise our kids should Mrs. Brad and I be killed in a plane crash (and by that, we meant being hit by a crashing plane, since we rarely flew). The criteria were who was close to us, knew our family and shared our values. (Also, it needed to be someone who could fit two additional kids in their family car.)

For us, it was  easy – we picked our closest friends from our hometown, who were both the obvious choice and willing. Neither of them, by the way, had been in our wedding. They were friends who became really close friends after our marriage started.

Fast forward two decades to now.

The way I evaluate friends at this stage – childhood is a distant memory, my wedding was decades ago, my kids are adults – has changed. Again.

It's not picking a "best friend."

It's not choosing who would be in a wedding.

It's not picking who would take care of my children.

It's . . .

Who Mrs. Brad should ask to carry my casket in the event of my untimely demise.

Yeesh.

Seriously. I'm hopefully decades from death (barring being hit by a crashing plane), but the way I currently rank  friends is to decide which six guys should carry my casket and which of them should be asked to speak at my funeral. I had coffee recently with my friend Steve (one of the six and one of the speakers) and he agreed.

Curious.

For me, the sad part is the realization that, when it comes down to it, the way we pick our closest friends (or the way I do, at least) is selfish. It's who's most useful to us.

As a kid, it's who is most fun.

When marriage arrives, it's who fills out the wedding party.

When kids arrive, it's who can step in and substitute.

And when we get older, it's who will memorialize us and carry our casket.

You want to be my friend? Be prepared to carry my coffin!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Talking to dogs shows that you're smart

Maybe our dogs should tell us to "speak!"

At least that's the best practice based on a report by Nicholas Epley, a behavioral science professor at the University of Chicago.

Epley says that when we speak to our pets, we anthropomorphise them – assign them human characteristics. Is it silly to do so? Maybe to your overly serious brother-in-law or to the neighbor who overhears you singing to your dog.

Not to Epley.

The professor says that doing so is a sign of what makes humans smart. He says talking to our pets is "a natural byproduct of the tendency that makes humans uniquely smart on this planet."

Of course, it's a human saying humans are uniquely smart, so consider that. Maybe a lizard is currently telling other lizards that baking in the sun is evidence of why lizards are uniquely smart.

But you know who thinks Epley's report is good news? Brandy, our 9-year-old weimaraner.

She implicitly trusts me. She also gets the same instructions from me every day when I leave: "OK, you're in charge now. Be a good girl today and I'll see you when I get home."

Imagine Brandy's disappointment if that showed I was crazy. Imagine her joy if she knew it showed I was smart! She might run in circles!

She might dart frantically around our yard.

Epley told digital publication Quartz that speaking to animals is "treated as a sign of childishness or stupidity, but it's actually a natural byproduct of the tendency that makes humans uniquely smart on this planet."

Yes, I used the quote about being uniquely smart on this planet twice. Because it makes me feel better. And it's almost as smart as talking to dogs.

Epley's view goes beyond pets. He says giving names to plants, cars and even cameras is smart. He says attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things (cats are sassy, the stock market is bullish, our car is stubborn) is a mark of our superior intelligence.

In other words, when I shout at my phone to stop bugging me, I'm being smart. When I call my toothbrush "Stretch," I'm showing unique brilliance. When I'm convinced that my pillow is part of a massive global conspiracy to suffocate me while I sleep, I'm exhibiting advanced thinking.

So despite what other people may think–and, frankly, what my judgmental coffee cup and my selfish shampoo might think–it's not weird to assign human characteristics to nonhuman things.

Brandy and I were talking about that the other day, although I was doing most of the talking. She showed dogged determination to understand me (See? It often makes sense, even if you're a skeptic!) as I explained why I don't fully trust the lawnmower because it seems to be more difficult to start when I'm in a hurry. Typical lawnmower, right?

Brandy didn't argue, like humans would. She didn't even speak. I presume she understood and I take comfort in the report by Epley.

When I talked with Brandy, she got to engage with a human being (the uniquely smart being on the planet) and I got to show how smart I was.

And she's an outstanding listener, too.

Unlike my microwave, Larry.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.