Unknown At The Time
an excerpt

I suppose I should tell you my name, first off. It’s Gaylord. Gaylord Danen.
Go ahead, laugh. Everyone else does. I’ll wait.
I really don’t know what my mother was thinking when she called me that. There are thousands, perhaps millions of names she could have chosen—hell, she could’ve made something up! But no. “Gaylord”. Good God, what a name. I must’ve heard every single joke. And it’s no consolation that Gaylord’s a main character in that one movie, Meet the Parents, I think? Yeah, no. Because it was a joke in the movie, too. So no help there. And I can’t even have a nickname, either, because when you grow up in one town and don’t move at all, everyone knows your name. And besides, what would I shorten it to—Gay? Lord? Ha, no.
* * *
God, but I was getting soaked. And cold, too. There was a flash of lightning, and I began to regret this. What if I got struck by lightning? What would they put in my obituary—“Boy of 17 killed because he thought he saw something which may or may not have been a deer or the janitor and decided to investigate”? I mean, jeez, that’s a terrible way to die.