Happy Weekend!
As you may have guessed from the headline, today is National Milkman Day. I’m honestly not sure if they have milkmen (milkpersons?) anymore, but it’s kind of interesting that with all the food delivery we do now, that never really had a comeback. You’d think it might, for the outfits alone.
Your present this week comes from r/AmITheAsshole, from a man who wants to know if he is “the asshole” for not wanting to change his kid’s hamster’s name for his sister.
So to start this off, my son is 11 and has been begging for a “family pet” for a while. I finally gave in when I felt we were ready to take one on, and also when I felt he was ready for the responsibility that comes with one. I expected a dog or cat, but he really wanted a hamster. So we spent a little over a week prepping, helping him “study” hamster care and dedicated a sizable spot in our living room for necessities and home.
We finally get around to picking one out at the pet shop, he’s set on the name Sonic, but the lady ringing us up mentioned the one he picked out was a girl and that she could get him a boy if he wanted, and he just lit up and said “That’s Amy!” and that was that, we took Amy home. This was in March.
My sister-in-law found out she was pregnant somewhere around that time, and last month they found out they were having a girl. Basically what happened was, they were picking out names and one of the names they narrowed it down to had Amy as the middle name. I made a joke of something like “Hey, we already have an Amy at our house!” Trying to be funny, but SIL didn’t think it was. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but a couple of days ago she asked to come by to talk.
She started off by saying the joke I made was in bad taste, I apologized for it, and then she suggested I change the name. I told her I didn’t think that would go over well with my son, and then she outright demanded it be changed “whether he likes it or not” because she wasn’t going to have a child share the name with a hamster. I agreed to talk it over with my son to see what he thought, and of course he didn’t want to, he even thought it was cool that his cousin would share her name with his hamster. I tried convincing him to rename her Sonic even, or some other Sonic character, but he didn’t want that. I explained how SIL feels about this, and he felt a bit hurt because he thought he upset SIL but he really didn’t want to change the name and didn’t understand why they couldn’t just share it.
I told SIL that my son was set on Amy, and she blew up. I’ll admit I got a bit defensive and reacted poorly, but I essentially told her it wasn’t a huge deal, it’s not like anyone is going to make the connection and by the time her child is old enough to know her name, Amy the Hamster likely won’t be around. She claimed it was embarrassing because she would always know the connection in her mind, to which I simply told her if it was such a strong reminder of a hamster then maybe it wasn’t a name she should use for her daughter.
My brother has told me that I am being selfish for not forcing my son to pick another name, SIL obviously thinks I’m TA, and my mom has said the whole thing is childish. So AITA?
I say no, absolutely not. Amy is an absolutely hilarious name for a hamster and honestly kind of a weird choice for a middle name anyway. Frankly, it’s rude of the sister to steal the hamster’s name to begin with. I agree with the commenter who suggested they lean into it and name every pet they ever have “Amy,” in perpetuity, forever.
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