Cha Cha Cha Chuck

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I don’t talk to myself just a whole, whole lot, but sometimes I do. Occasionally when I have goofed something, I call myself Chuck E. Cheese. To my recollection, no one else has ever called me Chuck E. Cheese, but I have been called several other names. I’m especially partial to Mom, Ma, Mama, Mo, Mum, and Little, the names my kids and grandkids call me.

As I have told you before, my daddy was Charles so I am Charlene. My family’s pronunciation of Charlene begins with the same ch sound as in Charles or cha cha cha, which is no problem for the folks in my little girl hometown or for the folks in Gainesboro. That’s the way Charlene is pronounced around here. But Cha Cha Cha Charlene doesn’t roll off the tongue so easily in other places. I can’t tell you the times I have introduced myself as Charlene and immediately been called Sharlene. I really don’t mind at all. It is funny though. Oh, no! Do you think they think I don’t know how to say my own name?! Oh, me!

My high school friends called me Charlie and spelled it Charle because of my being a girl. One college friend called me Chuck.

A tree-shaking machine grabs one of Pecan Shed Farms' 25,000 trees in its vast orchard in  Charlie, Texas. Photo courtesy: The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
A tree-shaking machine grabs one of Pecan Shed Farms’ 25,000 trees in its vast orchard in Charlie, Texas. Photo courtesy: The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

But, as I said, sometimes when I goof, I call myself Chuck E. Cheese. Folks have a lot of names they call themselves when they goof up — some of them not so nice. Folks have lots of not so nice names they call other folks when they goof up, too. That’s too bad. Names are precious.

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments;
and I will not erase his name from the book of life,
and I will confess his name before My Father
and before His angels.
He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Revelation 3:5-6

 

 

 

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