Su Do Nym

People often ask me where my name came from; it's from my Dad, Mr van der Put. And everyone thinks it's a stage name... have they never met a John before? But being funny aside, I am thinking of changing my name, Vince van der Put, Dan van der Put, not sure yet, feel free to vote. You may have thought with a name like van der Put, school wouldn’t have been much fun. Fortunately I had a saviour, a guardian angel, a scapegoat in the shape of Ryan Condon. Ah yes, whilst he was ribbed I was protected. However all that changed one dark dark spring morning when some scholarly jobsworth decided to upgrade our school registration system from the paper tick box of practicality, to an all new fancy singing and dancing electronic system. Unfortunately one of the many limitations of this new system was that it could only display the first 8 characters of a name, so picture the scene:

Teacher: Roberts?
Roberts: Here sir.
Teacher: Simpson?
Simpson: Here sir.
Teacher: vanderpu?
Me: [silence]
Teacher: vanderpu??
Me: [stony silence]
Teacher: VANDERPU!?
Me: I’m here!! I’m here! Goddamnit.

What were they trying to do to me? My name went from being a suave international playboy of a name to a fantastic turd - the wonderpoo.