Quote of the Day, 8/21/06

My copy of Jane Langton's The Diamond in the Window arrived today, and I am happily curled up with beverage on hand and book in hand. Here is the second paragraph (the first being where we find out that Edward wants to be President and wants a different name):

Eddy took out of his pocket a collection of bottle caps, matchboxes, and pennies and arranged them on the ground in a decorative pattern. If only fathers and mothers would be more careful when they chose names for their children! If only they would pick names that sounded well in Backwards English! "Edward Hall," for example, was all right in ordinary English, but it was terrible the other way around -- "Drawde Llah" didn't sound like anything. But "Robert Robinson" -- there was a name! If you turned it backwards and softened the "s," it was transformed into a name as strange and fantastic as that of an ambassador from some foreign land -- "Trebor Nosnibor"! Edward put his two ambitions in life together and whispered under his breath, "Introducing the President of the United States, Trebor Nosnibor." How glorious! Edward sighed.

I picked this paragraph out because it occurs to me that for a few years of my childhood I had a habit of turning names and words backwards too -- probably inspired by this book. As a note, my name is a horror backwards, even worse than Drawde Llah.