Yehooters

My brother’s name, Yehuda, is a fortuante name for me, because there are so many ways to make fun of it. Yehooters, Hooters, Ya-Who-Da, are all examples of how it has been misconstrued over the years. For over a decade, Gurty, a woman who dressed like a nurse and cleaned our parents apartment each week, called him Yehula. But no other misappropriation of the name has made as much of an impact as our sisters elementary school yearbook did.

When our sister, Ilana, first brought home her yearbook, Yehuda and I pored over the pictures of her friends and classmates. She was fourteen, three years older than me and six years older than Yehuda. Older kids had a certain mystique and everything they did – from the way they spoke with their hands, to the way their shirts hung out of their pants – held my attention. Staring at pictures of the graduates mid extra-curricular activity, was a lot like reading the ‘Stars, They’re Just Like Us’ section of Us Magazine.

Teachers, families and friends had purchased quarter to full page advertisements in the back of the yearbook, wishing the graduates well.

“Mazal Tov, Jacob! Love, Daniel, Jonathan and Sarah”

Together, my brother and I feverishly scanned the pages for our names. Eytan and Yehuda would stand out in the Michelles and Erics of our sisters class and their family members.

“Congratulations Ben! You did it! Love, Mom, Dad, Rachel and Emily”

The idea of our names printed in block letters in a published and distributed, hardcover book excited us. Yes, we were buried in the back of the 275 page tome, but we were in there, somewhere, and it proved that we were alive. “Eytan!” “Yehuda!” It would be written right there. Everyone who ever saw our parents half-page ad would know that we exist. And no one could argue with the 1991 Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy Jewish Day School Yearbook.

“Dear Ilana, We are so proud of you! May the future be bright. Love Mommy, Daddy, Eytan and Yelinda.”

We read silently. I took a breath and focused hard on my name. E-Y-T-A-N. No mistakes. It was spelled exactly as it was supposed to. Thank God. I was there.

Then I turned to my brother and said, “Yelinda?”

Could it be true? A variation on the name I never would have thought up myself? A twist so ludicrous, so feminine? This was a gift, I told myself. I looked at my brother next to me and screamed, “Yelinda!” and cackled like a true prick.

Yehuda just sat there, staring at the page, seething. How could anyone make such a ridiculous error, he must have thought. Sure ‘Yehuda’ is obscure, but not so much in an orthodox Jewish day school that a yearbook editor would somehow mistake it for Yelinda, an entirely made up name. This was an affront. A malicious act that denied his very existence, meant solely to piss him off and add fuel to his brother’s growing arsenal of name misuses. The plot against Yehuda.

“Shut up, Eytan,” he said calmly through his teeth as I howled away, “That’s not my name.”

But it was. Yelinda would become my brother, the yearbook said so right there in plain English. Yehuda was some kid my parents spoke about, it wasn’t written anywhere.

Over the next few weeks as I scratched the surface of Yelinda based teasing that would plague him for years to come, Yehuda pleaded with my parents to contact the yearbook editor and recall the printing.

“That’s impossible, Yehuda,” My father told him, “You are just going to have to live with it.” And he did, through countless taunting and provocations.

“Take a shower, ya smell, Yelinda!”

“Yelinda, stop eating cake, ya so fat!”

“Haha! Yelinda!”

If the 1991 yearbook editor knew the extent of the domestic abuse my brother suffered from his typo, I believe he would not have rushed through transcribing the half page ads in the rear of the book. Even after I graduated, three years later, and Yehuda was set in print and officially acknowledged in my half page ad, Yelinda stuck.

I only stopped making fun of my brother about his name, when I left for college and we stopped seeing each other daily. Distance turned the teasing into something more evil than I could stomach. He became Yehuda, sometimes Judah, as he prefers at the workplace and the bar. Today, Yelinda is saved for nostalgic purposes; High Holiday dinners, Milestone birthdays, perhaps a graduation.