“Anyway, now we could start our own business.” “Shouldn’t we do some research before starting it?” “What… why research? We have the experience. We could call it…,” but before continuing, I should give you a little bit of background.
In the beginning of spring my family and I decided to move to a new place. There were several apartments available at that time in the chosen area, and we quickly found a suitable one. We rented a truck, and in a day, our new apartment was full of our old stuff. During the first night there I noticed a noise. A constant noise that hummed, and hommed1, and hammed constantly. But I wasn’t laughing. It made me live many sleepless nights, during which I feared I could dye the walls in white lead-paint, and dye, and dye until I die. After several days of unsuccessful tries to find and solve the noise problem, we decided to move again. So, in about a month, we were happily accommodated in a new and quiet apartment.
Enriched spiritually and strengthened physically from the experience, during the breakfast of our first morning at the new place, I asked my sun (it’s my son, but the way I pronounce it, he is a sun... anyway, a sunny boy): “Mike, aren’t you happy that we changed our apartment?” “Yes, I am. But we changed it one, two, many times. And that would be with no commas and double o.” “Oh, I see. You mean ‘One too many.’ Anyway, now we could start our own business.” “Shouldn’t we do some research before starting it, dad?” “What… why research? We have the experience. We could call it ‘Your Moving Company.’” “Yeah, dad, with a cliché name like that, don’t you think the name is not taken already?” “OK, but we will offer a comprehensive service…” “So we can call it ‘Your Whole Company’”
While scribbling the name on our shortly sleeping old-fashioned family (that’s a fancy phrase for napkin,) we saw that it was stupid to put the word “Company” in the name. The shortened version, “Your Whole,” remained. “That sounds good, but it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why don’t we use ‘Haul’ instead of ‘Whole?’ And because we don’t like to work, we should change it to ‘You Haul.’” I added. Mike doesn’t like the waste of physical energy either, so he prompted: “And to make it close to the common people we could use the ‘U.’ That’s so cool,” he loudly exclaimed, and that “cool” was with four more “o”s (which, I thought, if it were in the virtual space would read “THAT’S SO COOOOOOL” and have numerous exclamation points—!!!!!!!!!!!!—enjoy them.)
“What was that howl? We are going to start a whole new company, ‘U Haul,’ with the risk to make a hole in our budget, and you start with a howl. If we don’t act properly, the ‘U Haul’ will become ‘Our Hole,’ and I don’t like this whole thing.” “Dad, we could seek some help, if you will.” “If I will? I used to! Last time we asked your uncle Al, and we ended up down by several grand, and a little kick in the butt; that’s the powerful uncle’s ankle. Besides, he will get half of the company. It will become ‘Al and U Haul’ if we are lucky. Otherwise it will be ‘Al & Co,’ unless we change the nature of business to make him happy. Yes, we can make a lot of money if we build upon the name ‘Al Co Haul.’” A window of opportunities opened, but it was too early in the day for it.
1 Depending on the pronunciation: humming, or hamming, if you are non native speaker.
