The Legend of Go

So this is Go. He is known as Brandon to most people, but not to me, his family, my family, people who have known him since he was a little boy or people who have been around his family quite a bit. When people learn of his name, which is really more than a nickname--his mother and I have encouraged him to legally it to "Go"but to no avail--they ask why. So here is the story. It's not very interesting but people always want to know, so here you go:


After his mom gave birth to him in the hospital, his dad took his two older brothers to go see the Disney classic "Pete's Dragon." Straight from the movie, they went to go see their mom and new baby brother. Still having images from "Pete's Dragon" fresh in their minds, they commented on how much he looked like one of the Gogans (being only 4 and 2 years old, they pronounced it as "Go-gums), the mean family from the movie. After that, he was never Brandon again, but "Gogums", which quickly got shortened to "Go", though his mother still calls him "Gogums" at times. So there's the story. Rivoting, wasn't it? He hates telling it; it's always a let down to the listener, he thinks.

The first time I really hung out with him, my room mate and I along with several other people, piled into a car in Provo to find a jacuzzi that was better than the cest pool they had at the Colony Apartments where we both lived. He was the last to get in. "Come on, Go, get in the car" his room mate said. The only place to sit was on my lap. Turning towards me, he said "I bet this is closer than you ever wanted to be to me." Little did he know that I had been keeping my eye on him from afar for the past 2 years, as we were in the same art history class one semester of my freshman year and had dubbed him "Art History Boy."
"Yah, you kinda reek." I probably said. I have always been an excellent flirt.
When I heard his room mate call him "Go", I thought "Wow, that seems to really fit him. Much more then "Brandon." He didn't seem like a Brandon to me. He doesn't seem like a Brandon to himself. But I continued to call him Brandon for a couple of weeks, because it was the safe thing to do. I believe I also called him "Sweet Cheeks" a couple of times, as that's what he usually signed the messages as that he left me on the whiteboard we kept in our apartment. Early in our dating days, he invited me and my room mate, along with his room mate to go with his family up at their cabin for General Conference. After hearing all those people call him Go the entire weekend, I could no longer think of him as Brandon. I gradually began to call him Go and have never turned back. Here is a picture from our early dating days.


Today, when I talk about him with people who only know him as Brandon, I call him "Brandon", though saying that name sounds totally weird and forced, which it is. But I've always done it out of courtesy, I guess. But since I view this blog as a journal of sorts, I use his name "Go." So there you go. Clarification.