Aaron Audley Forringer. My first name is biblical, Aaron, it means ‘mountain of strength’ or ‘exalted’ or ‘strong’. Aaron was also the first priest in the Levitical order for the Hebrew people. And how did he, Aaron this lowly slave get into the Bible, one word, ‘Nepotism’. His older brother Moses, The Chosen One. Moses had a stutter, so Aaron had to do all the talking. So, Mose’s lay about lazy brother, who was not aspiring to much, just content with being a slave while his older brother was out trying to get ahead at Pharoh’s palace. So, his older brother him gave him the job as second in command. Say it with me, N E P O T I S M.
But with Aaron as my first name, I was always first alphabetically for some things. Which was pretty cool, most times. But onto my middle name.
Audley was my grandfather’s first name. Audley was born, grew up and lived his entire life in Armstrong County, in Western PA. He
worked at least when I knew him at the N.A.P.A. (auto parts) store in Kittanning, PA. All stories say he was a heck of shade tree mechanic, and a very good at diagnosing issues from simple clues. He loved country music: he traded a canoe once for fiddle (or maybe it was a banjo for a canoe), and he could play a couple of instruments (musical talent is not inherited, as I have none). He was an avid hunter and had two sons who grew to adulthood, the eldest John Max, my father, and his younger brother my Uncle Kenneth Robert. Audley Homer Forringer passed away in 1977 at sixty-one when I was ten.
Before my grandfather, my great, great, great uncle Audley Grant Lasher (maternal) walked around with Audley as his first name. I am guessing here, but President Grant took office, the same year (1896) Audley Grant Lasher was born, so that might be the connection. Pictured here with my great, great, Grandfather George Lasher and Jim Frick, another uncle. (These are the pictures from my first wife, Kathy that she discovered on ancestray.com that started the whole idea for this article)
Before I knew I any better, I was embarrassed by my middle name. It was strange, different, not normal, and not common. Not like my brothers’ middle names, John and Robert. They got common, ordinary names. No one asked them to spell their middle names. They did not get people looking up quizzically when writing their middle names on a form.
But that is how you are when you are young, not knowing any better, not seeing the bigger picture, not realizing the importance or significance of things.
To look at it my name from the onomastics viewpoint. (I had to look up, so you do not have to.)
Audley is from the Old English meaning, ‘from the old meadow’. (Kinda makes you wonder if there was a name for someone ‘from the new meadow’.)
As far as commonality, not many famous people came up with the first name Audley: Audley Hugh Harrison a British boxer, and Audley Freed the American guitarist of Cry of Love and The Black Crowes.
When I was kid growing up, we had re-runs of tv show, the two that are germane to this essay are the Munsters and the Addams Family. When I was a kid, I liked the Munsters better than the Addams. The Munsters tried to fit in, going to PTA meetings, science fairs, having right of ways on zoning property, paying bills, you know normal everyday family things. Even though they were far from normal, they thought they were just everyday people.
The Addams family on the other hand could care less about fitting in, they didn’t intentionally stand out, in fact, they actually looked more normal than the Munsters.
Compare Herman to G
omez. Who would you think was the more ‘normal’ one if they were both walking down the street. 
In my young uneducated opinion, the Munsters were safe, it was easy to laugh at the ridiculous situations they found themselves in. The Addams were more subtle, nuanced. Their theme songs were also vastly different, The Munsters had a snappy, lyric free tune, the Addams family had a catchy tune with those snapping fingers, but with lyrics, describing the family: creepy, kooky, and altogether ooky. As a child you never wanted to be called any of those things.
Since I did not like my middle name, I would avoided telling people it as much as I could. I made it guessing game name sometimes. I would give them the first letter and they would try and guess it. No one ever did. I think a couple people would eventually work it out if I also said it ended with a ‘y’ and had six letters. People would think in was ‘Aubrey’ and when I told them no, they would go all kinds of crazy, accusing me of lying, if I did tell them eventually.
During my confirmation classes at the United Church of Christ in downtown Harrison City my fellow classmates, Shereen and Deana came up with a clever way of telling people in the guessing game of my middle name that they had guessed incorrectly. When our teacher made a guess as to what my middle name was, they would say “oddly it is not”. (Say it aloud, the joke will make sense.)
I created the guessing game because like I said earlier, I believed my middle name was weird.
Going away to college I think everyone tries to re-invent themselves in some way, newer fashions, trying new substances, facial hair, new types of friends. I gave myself a nickname and started introducing myself as AJ. My reason: I simply wanted to be different than who I was. I appropriated AJ from the 80’s private eye show, Simon and Simon, the blonde brother AJ Simon, and since my first name was Aaron, I firgured I could get away with a made-up middle initial. Not my proudest moment looking back, but hey kind of harmless. Although I still have college friends that call me AJ.
Luckily, I have learned through my many years. I have learned to love the kooky, the ooky, and even the creepy (although I do not like horror movies). I like stories about the peculiar and distinctive. My favorite true stories are when the circumstances get turned on their head and the unexpected occurs. Beethoven composed most of his best work after he had gone deaf, Mel Tillis stutters when he talks but has had numerous top forty country songs, and Jerry Seigel created the bullet proof character Superman after his father suffered a heart attack and died after being shot at during a robbery.
But everywhere you look there is strangeness, abnormality, people acting differently from everyone else. If you look you see people that walk off the common path. The path everyone else is on. People who choose something that no one else would, these people are not only interesting to watch, but also sometimes have an uncommon bravely.
I was gifted with a distinctive middle name. A name that makes people stop and take a second look. What I do with that gift is up to me. I could have continued to treat my grandfather’s name as a bother, something to try to avoid or diminish with a juvenile joke. Or I can embrace it, use it to my advantage, or at least as a reminder that being outside the normal is not a bad thing.
We are all influenced by events in our lives, through teachings, tragedies, travel, tests, triumphs, trials, tags, tribulations, and training. All these things combine over time to produce who we are. Hopefully, who we are is mostly due to intentional choices because we become who we want to be, good, bad, or indifferent. The even greater thing is if you do not like who you are right now then you can change as long as you are on this side of the grave.
I think I have finally grown into the gift that is my middle name is. I am proud of my middle name, proud that I carry it for my grandfather, and others in my family. Now I simply smile a bit when people ask what it is, especially when they see my initials on my book cover. Now you know a bit more about A. A. Forringer.
Categories: My Views On The Real World
Stories and Quotes from the Mind* and Keyboard of A.A.Forringer 
Witty observation, disparaging remark, question for A.A., well this is your chance.