by Luanne F. Oleas
When the 1960s ended, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district reverted to high rent, and many hippies moved down the coast to Santa Cruz. They had children and got married, too, though in no particular sequence. But they didn’t name their children Melissa or Brett. People in the mountains around Santa Cruz grew accustomed to their children playing Frisbee with little Time Warp or Spring Fever.
And eventually Moonbeam, Earth, Love, and Precious Promise all ended up in public school.
That’s when the kindergarten teachers first met Fruit Stand. Every fall, according to tradition, parents bravely apply name tags to their children, kiss them good-bye, and send them off to school on the bus.
So it was for Fruit Stand. The teachers thought the boy’s name was odd, but they tried to make the best of it.
“Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?” they offered.
And later, “Fruit Stand, how about a snack?”
He accepted hesitantly.
By the end of the day, his name didn’t seem much odder than Heather’s or Sun Ray’s. At dismissal time, the teachers led the children out to the buses.
“Fruit Stand, do you know which one is your bus?”
He didn’t answer. That wasn’t strange. He hadn’t answered them all day. Lots of children are shy on the first day of school. It didn’t matter. The teachers had instructed the parents to write the names of their children’s bus stops on the reverse side of their name tags.
The teacher simply turned over the tag.
There, neatly printed, was the word “Anthony.”
Copyright (c) 1992, 1998-2008 Luanne F. Oleas
Luanne earned a byline in Reader’s Digest for this essay.
Used permission of the author.
All rights reserved.
Author bio:
“Luanne F. Oleas aka LadyLu is the author of Wild Dancing and other novels. In addition, she is an op on the #Authors Undernet chat channel (one of the Top 10 channels on the Undernet). The California writer’s work has appeared in Reader’s Digest and other publications. You can read her short story The Pirate and the Butterfly in the The Blue Rose Bouquet.”
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Pammy, the main character in the 
Many of those 
Editor of The Blue Rose Bouquet since 1998 and a professional writer since 1984,