Agreeing to disagree

If Baby’s mom said yes, her dad said no. If her mom said, “You need to eat your vegetables,” her dad would say, “It’s time for dessert.” Sometimes Baby thought agreeing to disagree was the only thing her parents actually agreed on and that they had forgotten about the whole agreeing-for-the-sake-of-agreeing part of life. She sometimes wondered if her parents would have anything to talk about if they started agreeing on things. But since they didn’t agree on much at all, they could talk forever and ever about everything they didn’t agree on, and that was almost everything.

Baby’s brother, Tom, claimed that their parents agreed on everything in the world, and the state, country, and universe, until eight and a half years ago, when Baby was born. Tom said that if Baby had never been born, they’d still agree on everything.

But when Baby was born, that all changed because they couldn’t agree on what to name her. And after that, they pretty much never agreed on anything else.

When Baby was born, Mrs. Puddle took one look at her adorable little face and knew her name should be Emily. But when Mr. Puddle looked at his daughter, he thought she looked exactly like his favorite aunt, Ferdinanda, so he wanted to name her Ferdinanda. Mrs. Puddle hated the name Ferdinanda. She said it was an unbelievably terribly bad name. Mr. Puddle said Ferdinanda sounded like the name of a sweet angel.

“Or a cow,” said Mrs. Puddle.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Puddle, “because the baby looks nothing like an Emily and everything like Aunt Ferdinanda.”

For the next day, they went back and forth between the two names.

“Emily.”

“Ferdinanda.”

“Emily!”

“Ferdinanda!”

“Emily!!!!”

“Ferdinanda!!!!”

Other people jumped in to try to stop the fighting and suggested entirely different names.

“What about Halley?” asked Mrs. Puddle’s best friend, Marcy.

“Her name is Emily. That’s final,” responded Mrs. Puddle.

“No, it’s Ferdinanda,” said Mr. Puddle.

“I like Rachel or Sarah,” said Mrs. Puddle’s mother. “They’re classic names and very patriotic. Did you know that Paul Revere’s wives were named Sarah and Rachel? You can’t get much more American than Paul Revere or his wives or his horse, but I don’t know his horse’s name.”

Mr. Puddle’s mother said, “I want you to name her Juliet. My mother’s name was Juliet, and this baby’s name should be Juliet too. And anyway, my sister Ferdinanda does resemble a cow. Juliet here is beautiful and looks nothing like a cow.”

“I like mysterious names. Call her Greer,” said the lady sharing Mrs. Puddle’s hospital room.

Tom Puddle knew he had come up with the best options of all. “Let’s name her Goaway or Getoutahere.”

“No! No! No!”

“Her name is Emily,” insisted Mrs. Puddle.

“Ferdinanda,” insisted Mr. Puddle.

When the time finally came to fill in the box that instructed “Write Baby’s Name Here” on the birth certificate, Mr. Puddle took the pen and started to write “Ferdinanda.” Mrs. Puddle reached across her hospital bed and grabbed the pen and paper out of her husband’s hands and began to write “Emily.” Mr. Puddle tried to get the pen back, but Mrs. Puddle pulled so hard that the pen flew across the room. A nurse picked it up off the hospital room floor, snatched the piece of paper out of their clutches, and wrote the word “Baby” in the box.

Baby was born eight and a half years ago, yet to this day, Mrs. Puddle calls her daughter Emily and Mr. Puddle calls her Ferdinanda. Everyone else calls her by her real name – Baby.

The best disagreement

The best part of having parents who didn’t agree was the presents. If Emily – that is, Ferdinanda – that is, if Baby wanted something special, she generally ended up getting two somethings – the special something she wanted and another slightly less special, but still usually pretty cool, something. Sometimes the whole present thing worked out so well for her that her friends said, “I wish my parents would stop agreeing.” Or they’d say, “When my parents stopped agreeing on things, all I got was divorced parents.”

Baby and Tom got their favorite presents over disagreements: dolls and bikes, electronic games and fancy books with moving parts. Often disagreements over what to eat for dinner, where to go for vacation, and where to live ended with more presents, extra vacations, and houses under clouds.

Baby and Tom agreed that one disagreement stood out as the best disagreement ever. The Puddles had wanted to get a dog. Naturally, Mr. and Mrs. Puddle hadn’t been able to agree on what kind of dog. So they got two dogs, a tiny teacup Chihuahua named Sally and a huge Great Dane named Sally. Both dogs were named Sally because they couldn’t agree on which dog should be named Sally. Having two dogs with the same name was confusing, but Tom and Baby didn’t care because they got a big Sally and a little Sally instead of just one Sally. And it really didn’t matter anyway, because whenever anyone called “Sally, come!” usually only big Sally would come.

The storm ends, finally

On Monday morning, a week and a day after that old storm rolled in, Baby woke up to almost sunny skies. All the clouds, aside from one dog-shaped cloud, had taken off in pursuit of a new storm. Baby ran through the house and pounced on her parents’ bed. “We can go! Get up!”

“What, Emily?” said a groggy Mrs. Puddle.

“Look out the window. Come on. Get up, Dad. Get up.”

“Do I have to, Ferdinanda?” asked Mr. Puddle

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Mr. Puddle stretched his back and let his eyes wander over to the window. “You might be right. Let’s turn on the television and check the weather forecast.” Mr. Puddle leaned over and turned on the small black-and-white television set. Please, John Jakes, he thought. Give me another week of rain, just one more week. All I want is one more tiny little week of rain.

John Jakes, the weatherman on Channel 6, announced: “The rain’s gone. The clouds have moved on. We’ve got sunshine everywhere you look.”

John Jakes apparently had not looked at the Puddles’ house, because if he had, he would have said, “The rain’s gone and the clouds are gone except for at the Puddles’, where there’s a huge dog-shaped cloud.”

The moment Mr. Puddle saw John Jake’s glistening white teeth, he knew his good luck had ended. They’d be heading back to the city. “Maybe we can stay here one more day?” Mr. Puddle asked wistfully.

“Not a chance,” said Mrs. Puddle, who started humming her favorite Beatles tune before her feet hit the ground.

Baby tore through the house, yelling, “We can go. We can go. Tom, get up. We can go.”

The two Sallys, who were sometimes referred to as Sally Squared, got caught up in all the excitement and barked a few times. They kept their eyes on the Puddles as they gathered their toys and bags, and ran along behind them for a while as they loaded up the car. When they got bored, they found a comfortable spot on the sidelines to watch the action. Big Sally rested her chin on her right paw, but little Sally kept her head raised.

The Puddles ran into the house, grabbed some bags, stuffed bags into the station wagon, ran back into the house, grabbed more bags, stuffed these bags into the station wagon, ran back to the house, grabbed even more bags, and so forth. The Sallys watched as Tom, Mr. Puddle, and Mrs. Puddle squeezed into the overstuffed car. They watched as Baby looked up and saw the dog-shaped cloud lift its leg, and they watched as Baby jumped into the car to avoid the rain. They kept watching as the Puddles drove off, leaving them in the rain under the dog-shaped cloud.

Sally squared

“They’ll be back,” said big Sally.

“I wonder,” replied little Sally.

The two Sallys lay down next to each other and kept their eyes on the road.