I Am a HYPHEN-ATOR

A hyphen ( ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with the dashes ( –, —, ― ), which are longer and have different functions, and with the minus sign ( − ) which is also longer. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation.


Which brings me to today's post.
Recently Shank had to register in at the hospital for a test. As we have both done too many times to mention. Sometimes you get the nastiest person the hospital could find to fill that job. Other times you get the nicest. This particular day we got a real nice lady who not only laughed at our jokes as we often do when having to fulfill an awful task like getting some test done to see if you can possibly have something you really don't want, need or have the time for, much less having to sit and go through all the questions that are the same and the answers are the same and you are so nervous about the test so you sit and make stupid jokes hoping you get a person who knows this is a rough time and actually gets it. This was such a lady, I will call her "Nickie."
As we were going through the usual, name, address, age, insurance card crap, Nickie finishes with most of the questions she had for Shank and began to inquire on his "wife's" information. As she spoke my name and looked at me with a question mark look, but laughing at the same time as if she knew I was the wife, Shank being the never ending jokester came back with..."Oh oh, excuse me, no you mean my wife..no this is my girlfriend..oh how awkward!" Of course this got a big laugh. She explained how she tries not to assume anything when it comes to that information, so not to embarrass anyone, and we just joked with her a while as she tried to finish up her paperwork. As she did she could not quite come up with my information as quickly as she would have liked....she started to get frustrated and I decided to offer a suggestion as I knew why this may be happening.
My last name has a hyphen included as I kept my last name prior to marrying the Shankster. More often than not, this seems to be an ever confusing thing for most when it comes to any kind of paperwork or computers. But my name is such for a good reason and it is that way on my records and you have to include it correctly. But before I could say anything she notices my name but does not include the hyphen but also does not give me any room to jump in to help her enter it in correctly. Instead she starts in talking about the women who use both maiden names and married names like this and how some are just ran together and some are simply spaced apart. She goes on to talk about how she can have a problem with it all and....WALLA... all of a sudden she realizes that she had to include the hyphen....she kept talking for what seem like an hour and it looked like she maybe starting to run herself underground and to keep her from saying anything that would make it too uncomfortable for both of us I just jumped up from my chair and said.."Hello, I am Dona Blankity-Blank and I am a HYPHEN-AT OR!! And I am proud of it." And with that the Shankster jumped up too and said "And I fully support her." I thought Nickie would pee her pants with laughter. I then got to explain why I hyphenate and she being a divorcee with child understood and confessed she was an illegal hyphenator during her child's school days. It sure was more relaxing going into the testing area laughing instead of worrying.


Now I tried to look it up before posting to not look too stoop id on my spelling..but I am guessing hyphenator is not a real word...Ok, so I made it up, sue me. But if you were in my mind hearing how I say it....its funny.
If you have ever seen a movie called FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR/1986....just say Hyphenator that way.
Its funny....I crack myself up