You say its your Birthday!

Happy Birthday Omar! Who is Omar some of you may be wondering, is he another one of my mysterious boyfriends like Killa or Raoul? Not hardly. Omar is my Mom. Back when she first became a grandmother we had a discussion about what she ought to be called. Granny was taken by her Mom, and we never could get on board with Meemaw, Mamaw and the like...I don't know. Something about Meemaw and it's variants just rubbed us the wrong way. Grandma was taken by Grandma Wachter So since we were living in the Netherlands when the blessed even took place we looked to our Dutch/ English dictionary for some inspiration. That's were we found Oma, Dutch for Grandma. It was perfect, Mom was now an Oma. Zach happily called her that for years until he said it in a classroom in Nebraska and was laughed at for making up his own words. They never would believe him that it was a real word, but then this is the same school that employed a teacher(one of Zach's favorites) who told him there was no such thing as a duty free shop in an airport...Those folks in Nebraska need to get out a little more, dontcha think?

Anyway, how did Oma turn into Omar? I have two words for you..."spell check" " ahh, I see..." I hear you all saying. Yes, whenever we would type in the word Oma and run the spell check Omar would pop up as a better option for Oma. SO naturally I found it hysterically funny to accept the proffered "improvement" and would allow the program to change all my Omas to Omars. It stuck and now Oma has been Omar for years in our correspondence. Mom even said she heard Zach call out " goodnight Omar " a few days ago, so now its not just in the written word that she is called Omar, but in practice as well. Now that we all are running around calling her Omar, she may wish she had stuck with Meemaw!