Dylan grew up with several names. We should have known, since it began before he was even born. For quite a while during Donna’s pregnancy, Dylan’s name was going to Ian. Ian Tyler Zimmerman. We had it whittled down to three names: Dylan, Ian and Tyler. I wanted to avoid Dylan, because of the obvious musical history connection to the name Dylan and Zimmerman. For those who don’t know, Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman. I didn’t want Dylan to be constantly asked about whether that was the intention, so we opted for Ian. This presented a lot of trouble for people for some reason. They didn’t know how to spell it or they didn’t know how to say it. Ultimately, we caved in and went with Dylan Tyler Zimmerman for better or worse. We loved the name. We just didn’t want him to get picked on for it, which he never did. I guess younger people didn’t know their music history like I did. But that was just the beginning. I remember that shortly after Dylan was born Mike Myers had a character on Saturday Night Live that called everybody something-“mister”. “Doug-mister”, “Bob-mister”, and of course he would take it to extremes for maximum hilarity. Well, this seemed to catch on in the small Zimmerman household at the time. Soon, everything and everybody became a-mister. Eventually, it lead to our innocent, unsuspecting first born child. He became simply “Mister” for quite a while. Before, Mike Myers moved on and made a fortune pretending to be an obnoxious James Bond parody character, we grew out of the “mister” period. That didn’t mean we didn’t come up with something new. Only this time it was extremely generic and was usually best delivered with a twang: “Boy”. “Do your homework, Boy.” “What are we going to do about the boy?” This is stayed around for a long time, and still was used periodically right up to Valentine’s Day. Always in a tongue and cheek sort of way. It stayed around so long that Marisa quickly became “the girl.” Whenever we would venture out of the confines of L.A. county everything had a twang when we spoke, especially “boy”. It was more fun that way. Love you, boy.

I forgot to mention that Marisa occasionally called Dylan “Dilly.” Once in a while I would ask her when I got home, “Where is Dilly?”