Zane

When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, there was some twerp—a fourth-grader, probably, with a nub of a rat-tail—who was a little hotshot basketball player, and I was having none of it. My way of trash-talking him was going up next to him when he was at the water fountain and whispering, with as much cool menace as I could muster, "I bet I can guess your name." I'd overheard someone shout it at him, maybe even someone as embarrassing as his mother.

"Oh, yeah?" he said. "What is it?"

"West," I said.

But it wasn't West, it turned out, and later he probably stole the ball from me or was unimpressed by my left-handed dribbling or something equally impertinent. His name was Zane.

Or maybe I guessed his name was Zane, and it was West. I no longer remember which way it went.

West, the last name of that guy who played Batman. Zane, the last name of my downstairs neighbor, the one who always called up my mother to tell her I was being too loud.

I'm sorry I guessed his name wrong, but I'm glad it was Zane, not West. Unless it was the other way around, in which case I'm doubly sorry.