I’ve been thinking about Sa-Jack, my roommate back in my fraternity days, because later this week is my birthday — and two days later, his. Sa-Jack, these days, looks like Jon Stewart, and like Jon Stewart, he’s a pretty funny guy. Always was. One of his best routines, back in the day, was his riff on how he got his name: His shrill mom was always ragging at him and his older brother, but in her apoplectic sputtering, she could never come up with the right name. Thus, his brother, Sam, was always “Ja-Sam! Enough with the salami!” And he was always, “Sa-Jack, you look horrible in that shmata!”
Yesterday we took Kemba for his first visit to NYC. (The Nova Scotia native was a little puzzled by all the concrete when looking for a good spot to wiz, but he took it like a trooper.) We stopped in to see Greg and Kelly’s new apartment, then went to meet his cousins — Ka-Sarah, Sa-Kat, and Ka-Patty — at my sister Sandy’s. My own sons, like their cousins, know all about the Sa-Jack syndrome. They don’t even remark anymore, just shake their heads with a knowing smirk, when Carol and I call them, alternately, Gr-Matt, Ro-Greg, and Ma-Robby.
I mention all this, of course, because my dear, sweet little Canadian puppy, in just his first two weeks as a U.S. resident, has already been addressed, maybe 750 times, as Ric-Kemba. And as his brothers will tell him, he damned well better get used to it.
LOOK FOR A NEW BEAGLE MAN POST EVERY THURSDAY. OR PRETTY CLOSE TO THURSDAY. COULD BE WEDNESDAY. OR FRIDAY. LET’S NOT GET TOO OBSESSIVE HERE . . . 
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Welcome to Ric-Kemba. And happy birthday Beagle Toller Man from Sa-Jack and El-Mar-Carol.
hi, have new computer, no email address for carol, please tell her to send email so i can reply and have it. like hearing about new Canadian pal kemba, after the UConn player? lucy
OF COURSE after the UConn player! 🙂
I love it! That’s better than my father’s hollering “Sara!” my daughter’s name, when calling his dog, Clara! Sa-Clara would have worked just fine.