At the zoo

We spent Sunday at the National Zoo. If you've never been, it's worth the trip. [Unless you live in California or Texas or someplace far from DC; in that case you should probably just go to your local zoo.]

In any event, the day was full of discoveries for Samson. We got to see free-range tamarins, watched a pair of seals race around their, er, habitat, and we even saw the famed pandas.

We stood in a tightly packed crowd in the midday heat watching the baby panda lick honey from a plastic milk crate (plastic milk crates being second only to bamboo in a panda's diet).

For his part, Samson was nonplussed. He was pretty interested, however, in the ladder some workers had left on a part of the exhibit still under construction. Our exchange went something like this:

Me: Do you see the baby panda? He's playing.

Samson: Yeah.

Me: Do you see his mommy back by that tree?

Samson: (looking in opposite direction) Ladder. I see a ladder. Climb it? Pandas climb ladder.

Even so, it was a good day. As we made our way around the park and caught snippets of other peoples' conversations, I couldn't help but wonder: Is Jeremy the new Kyle?

On more than one occasion and in different locales involving different families, I head a Jeremy being told to stop doing that, to get down off of there, or to watch his attitude.

And then I thought that while everybody knows that Kyles are bad news, maybe Jeremy is a kind of sleeper cell name for a kid.

I mean, it's got three syllables and is a kind of a nice mix between Jerry/Gerry (minus the cartoon/Gus Van Sant baggage) and Jeremiah (a cool enough name but sadly and forever linked with Three Dog Night).

I bet you never thought about it. But consider some famous Jeremys: Jeremy Andretti, a late addition to the Bradford family on Eight is Enough. The troubled cousin went on to get the bejesus beat out of him by a bunch of spoiled rich kids (led, no less, by the incomparable Billy Zabka), win the All-Valley Karate Championship (and the love of a young Elisabeth Shue), and then somehow lose everything and have to start all over again. In Okinawa.

Next up is Jeremy the homicidal kid from the Pearl Jam song. Enough said there.

I'll grant you that Jeremy Bentham kind of complicates things as far as my theory is concerned. I mean, who doesn't love utilitarianism? But I'm pretty sure most of his friends called him Sandy.

Last, and probably least, is Jeremy Shockey of the NY Giants. Good ballplayer, but not somebody you'd want to go to the zoo with...