Five insightful minutes, two birthdays and two LPs

At the local produce market, arriving at the cash register. LP is how he is on bad days, high-strung, needy, agitated, impatient, restlessly shouting and whining "maman, maman, maman!..." for no reason. The cashier is on the phone, quickly hanging up. She apologizes, explaining that it's her son's 16th birthday and he wants to know how soon she's coming home. That's funny, I think to myself. I can very much remember the day this boy was born. I was celebrating my 18th birthday in La Rochelle, France, it was an absolutely gorgeous and perfect day, and I was so hungry for life, so adventurous, so fearless. Gosh, this was my official coming of age and someone born on that day is now 16 years old...

The woman gently tells LP off, saying that before she saw him, she thought he was very distressed because of his shouting, but now, she can see that he's all fine and maybe just being a little dramatic. "He's always like that..." I say with a smile.

"Yeah, he's... insecure," she offers. And two things come to my mind. One, a breakthrough I had during one of the few therapy sessions I had taken years ago to resolve some issues with failed relationships, when I had suddenly put the finger on my own insecurity. And two, that I had never seen it this way, but this woman who doesn't know us at all might have just said the simplest and truest thing I've ever heard about my son.

I pay, while my child munches on some plastic packaging. "Don't put that in your mouth LP..." I tell him, while taking it off. "His name is LP?" the woman asks, grinning. I nod. People never remark on his name, which we picked by combining the first names of our great-grandfathers, and which is very normal and average, neither a unique far-fetched thing nor one that is common at all.

But it turns out it was also the name of her son.