I dub thee ...

People name the weirdest things. Aside from their kids, I mean.

We name animals.

We name houses.

We name body parts.

... and we name cars.

Amber's late sort-of convertible was named Duka, which in some branch of Buddhism means "suffering." It was an appropriate name. Duka suffered much and finally was put out of his misery by a local salvage yard. Amber seemed OK with the decision at the time, but she recently confessed that she misses Duka. The driver-side door didn't open from the outside anymore, the roof had to be constantly retaped to keep copious amounts of moisture from getting in and, for a while when she lived out on Welsh lane, Duka was a temporary safe haven for a family of ferral cats who managed to claw their way through the then-untaped roof. Her brothers' Christmas present to her that year was a phenomenal duct-taping roof job. God bless Jed.

My brother used to have a pickup truck named Bessy. His German friend Niels named it The Wednesday Truck. I'm not sure whether that's because Matt bought it on a Wednesday or Niels only saw it on Wednesdays or what ... but it was Bessy The Wednesday Truck. I miss Bessy. I think Matt does, too.

The first car I ever owned as my own was Chewy. The power steering had gone out, so every time I turned the steering wheel, the car emitted a growl that sounded very much like the chortling of Chewbacca.

After Chewy died in the parking lot at Cam-Plex (cracked engine block), I got Eeyore -- a long, blue Sable wagon. Eeyore, like his namesake, was a good and loyal friend to whom many misfortunes happened -- his final misfortune was a deer at dusk on the interstate at 80 miles an hour on Thanksgiving weekend. Poor Eeyore. May he rest in peace.

I quit naming cars for a while after that. Every car I'd named had met a gruesome ending, and I was rather tired of gruesome endings. I sold my nameless cars and let them meet their fates in their new owners' hands. One was wrecked right in front of me by its new high school driver. Punk.

But I got to thinking tonight ... if I had to name the car I have now, I would name it Lazarus. It keeps coming back from the dead, it can have a funny smell, and I plead with Jesus each time the end seems imminent. The only difference is that I doubt Jesus weeps over my car. My car's dumb owner, perhaps ... but definitely not over my car.