August Morrison

I had a chance to see a number of concerts during my college years. One evening, a bunch of us got tickets to see Frank Zappa. We piled into the car and drove to the city, where we picked up another friend who was studying at one of the universities there.

There was no such thing as a mobile phone back in those days. I don’t think the guy even had a phone in his room; we had to physically knock on his door to let him know that we were there. We couldn’t just walk into this dormitory, though; we had to sign in at a visitors’ desk. 

I was first in line to sign the book. I don’t know what possessed me to do this - I guess I was in one of my goofy moods - but I decided to make up a fake name.

I wrote down the first two words that popped into my head: Jack Modern

The next guy saw what I wrote and came up with his own phony name. 

The third guy, perhaps lacking imagination, wrote down ‘Frank Zappa’.

The fourth and final guy in our crew was earnest enough to use his real name. I won’t use his real name here - he’s a nice guy, and I don’t want to embarrass him. Let’s say, for the sake of the story, that his name was August Morrison.

The young lady behind the desk picked up the ledger and looked at it for a moment. “Ah, come one guys!” she protested. “You can’t make up fake names.”

“They’re our real names,” I insisted.

“Yeah!” the others chimed in.

She looked at the ledger carefully once again.

“August Morrison!” she exclaimed angrily. “What kind of a name is that?”

The only real one, actually...