Reba Sue, where are you? Immortalized in song

Do not insult the mother alligator until you have crossed the river.

- Haitian proverb

When the family met over Thanksgiving, the table conversation got around to the fact that if I had been born a girl more than half a century ago, my name would have been Reba Sue.

That name selection remains a mystery.

No one in the family was named Reba.

We often teased my mother that it must have been one of Daddy's old girlfriends, but they deny it. They went to the same rural high school, and both recall there were no Rebas on its rolls.

No, Daddy just liked the name "Reba," and Mama says she was only allowed to soften its uniqueness with the "Sue" additive.

When I arrived as a boy, they went with "William," a longtime family favorite, and Reba lost her luster.

When my sisters were born in the years that followed, they took more common names, and Reba Sue became a family anecdote remembered only occasionally at holiday dinner tables.

Until now.

It seems my brother-in-law, a University of Georgia music major who plays music in Baton Rouge, recently heard the Reba Sue story.

He thought it amusing and ironic. Who knows what their name would have been if their gender had been different?

He also thought it easy to rhyme.

He wrote a song called Reba Sue and it is now immortalized in a musical selection, which I heard last week over the Internet at his band's Web site: zenbillyband.com.

It proves once again that inspiration doesn't always come from the usual places.

Sometimes it's sparked by the story of a name never used about a person who never existed for the girl who turned out to be a boy.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Some people love Christmas. I love Thanksgiving. Last year I had my chance to do the traditional thing of shooting my own turkey for Thanksgiving. Man, you should have seen the people scatter in the meat department!

TODAY'S JOKE: A man walked by a table in a hotel and noticed three men and a dog playing cards. The dog was playing with extraordinary skill.

"This is a very smart dog," the man commented.

"Not so smart," said one of the players. "Every time he gets a good hand, he wags his tail."