Friends, Romans, Countrymen - My name... uhhh. That is my name, ahem, my name is Napolean Alexander Cromwell. I cannot imagine there is any name worse than my name. My parents must have hated me. How could they have named their only child Napolean? It's bad enough that our last name is Cromwell. Not that many people even know who Cromwell was.

I can still hear my dad, "My boy, Oliver Cromwell was the single most important man in English history." Then my father would look at me. "And English history is your history! Without the pilgrims..." My father could always be counted on for an eternal history lesson. Not that he ever actually got to the lesson. He always started on how incredible Napolean Bonaparte was to the French, how magnanimous Alexander and his father Philip were to the Macaedonians and, of course, don't even get him started on Oliver Cromwell.

You see, Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan, a round-head, a really rich land lord who sat in the House of Commons in the parliament of King Charles. Charles was an extreme royalist and his policies were nothing short of aristocratic snobbery. Cromwell detested royalists and he had an unquenchable inner-drive to compel his countrymen to set up a more democratic method of government. But, you see, that's the history lesson my father never got to. He always started to explain the exploits of Cromwell or Alexander or Napolean, but he never got past the philosophy of why history is important. I sometimes wonder if my father actually ever knew anything about the big three.

The most exciting thing that ever happens to me is an occasional coffee spill on somebody's lap in the cafe that I frequent. Last week some guy named Sedrick had coffee spilled on his lap and he got into a shouting match with the waitresses. The shouting match was a bonus.

Anyway, here I am. Stuck. I am absurdly stuck in the mire of my own name. The only regular relationship I have is with the guy at the hospital pharmacy who gives me my allergy pills. Stan is his name, according to his name tag. Of course, I've never really spoken to him so, as far as I know, his name tag might belong to someone else. Anyway. How would you like not ever being able to introduce yourself without going into history? It reeks! It's painful! You don't believe me. You try introducing yourself as Napolean and see how people react.

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Nap 2	English Muse	Sedrick	Rick 1	Stan