When I was checking my books out of the library tonight, the young librarian gave me a funny look. I figured it was because of my usual strange mix of books, in this case The Essential Calvin and Hobbes and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini's Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds. (As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.)Instead of asking me what that was all about, she asked me if I were related to the Dodds in Oshkosh. Seems she went to school with some Dodds there. Does anyone know if we are?
Last year the head librarian asked me if I were from the Dells area, because she had graduated with someone named Dodd. I can't find any Dodd listed in the telephone directory for the Dells or Delton area, although there are a couple of Dodds in Portage and another couple down in Prairie du Sac.
Turns out the Dodds in Oshkosh are known to my friend Michelangelo, though, if you want to talk about a small world. And when I was in Chicago I had a seminarian named Tim Dodd who came to me for spiritual direction. He's now Father Dodd. When I was in the monastery in Brighton, Massachusetts, there was a Father Michael Dodd living at a monastery only a few blocks away, which led to some confusion from time to time.
We're everywhere, we're everywhere.
Kinda scary, huh?
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The illustration is a panel from a 1952 Mark Trail comic strip by Ed Dodd.
The Dodds in Space title is a pop culture reference to a running skit on The Muppet Show called Pigs in Space. Nothing meant by that!
2 comments:
I never run across any Dodds! I had someone in Dallas once ask if I was related to a Dodd somewhere. I just wondered, "Do people automatically assume since we have the last name that we are related?"
I think especially if a name is not that common people wonder if those with the same name are related. I think it is also just a way of making friendly conversation. At least, I hope so! There was a serial killer out in the northwest whose name was Westley Alan Dodd. I don't think we want to claim him.
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