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My wife came out of the hospital room
and her eyes were ringed with red,
and I took her into my arms and we just both cried.
She was saying goodbye to my brother
and we were taking him off life support that night
after about three weeks of him being in a coma,
and we broke our embrace, and she looked up at me
and she said, "I promise that we'll name our first child
either Edward or Edwina."
And I looked at her and I said,
"Oh, you better hope he lives through the night,
because you got to take that shit back."
And I said that for two reasons,
because one, I just didn't want to say the name Edwina
for the rest of my life.
And I knew with my karma as a shitty teenage boy
that I was definitely having a daughter first.
There was no question about that.
But the second reason, so names have power, right?
And I think I know this more than most people.
And the day I realized it, I was in a bank in Mexico
and I passed the teller a travelers' check.
It was 1991.
And she looked at the travelers check
and she looked at my passport, and then she disappeared.
And I leaned over and I looked around
and she was on the floor laughing.
And this was not a surprise.
The name I was born with was Fracaso.
And in Italian, Fracaso means explosion or natural disaster,
which is kind of fitting for my life.
But in Spanish, Fracaso means complete and utter failure.
And in certain countries,
which was new to me, but apparently Mexico is one of them,
Fracaso is synonymous with the word "fuck-up."
So I could completely understand
that if someone handed me a piece of paper
that said Peter Fuck-up, I would laugh hysterically too.
But it was that moment where I realized
this is my father's name,
a man who left when I was two,
that I have not seen since I was eight.
He never paid child support,
lied about his address so we couldn't find the fucker
to actually contribute to my life.
And here I am,
I'm carrying this name with this horrible legacy.
And so in that moment,
I decided to take on my mother's name, which was an upgrade.
Not a big one.
My mom's last name was Slaughter.
But after witnessing people's reaction to my name
and that by laughing so hard
they had to fall off their chair
at their place of employment, no doubt,
I realized it was time, it was time for me to really
choose the woman's name who had raised me,
who had contributed the most
to my existence and my adulthood.
And so when I came home
from that six month period in Mexico,
and I saw my mom and I explained,
"Hey, I made this decision, I want to take on your name."
And she said, "Funny, you should mention that.
I've been thinking about dropping the S."
And I thought that was awesome.
So together I took on her name,
and we together dropped the S,
and I spent a lot of time thinking about, like, you know,
I at that time I was 20 years old,
and I wanted to get my PhD in sociology and teach.
And I thought that Doctor Laughter sounded a little bit
too much like a pimp.
And yeah, so I went with the pronunciation Lauder,
and Peter Lauder sounded much better than Peter Fuck-up
And so life went on and then I got married,
and my wife, who took on my name,
thought that I was completely psychotic
for using the pronunciation Lauder
when it was spelled "laughter."
It was just like, that was just absolutely absurd.
So she went by Laughter and I went by Lauder
and it was totally confusing
until much to my surprise, I found myself
one day introducing myself as Peter Laughter.
And when you introduce yourself as Peter Laughter,
people react to you
in a very, very specific and positive way.
"What a great name, you must be so happy."
And you know, when 50 people say that to you
in a period of a month,
you actually start to believe it, right?
You know, you start to take that on.
And so when my wife said
that she was going to name our daughter Edwina,
I knew that was a mistake.
And we talked about it and we decided
that we were going to name our child "Eddie" either way.
And I knew I was going to have a girl,
and I worried about the reaction, "Oh, it's a boy's name."
And we spelled it E-D-D-Y
like a current moving in the opposite direction,
Because I wanted the magic of my brother
and the magic of moving against the current
to be part of her life.
And I remember when she was about four years old,
we were at a birthday party,
and there was a magician who asked for volunteers.
And she volunteered.
And the magician said those words,
"Isn't that a boy's name?"
And I remember myself standing up, and I was angry,
and I was waiting for this moment.
I knew it would come.
And my daughter, at four,
just looked at him like he was a stupid idiot
and said, "No, that's my name."
And I knew that the magic worked.
Thank you.