If My Middle Name Was “Danger”

Paul Danger Davidson.

Really, it has an amazing ring to it if you sit down and write it on a pad a thousand times over in tons of different handwriting styles, much like women who are about to get married do with their soon-to-be legal name.

Mr. Danger Davidson.

I’d have people who didn’t know me that well refer to me as Mr. Danger Davidson, much like the formal “Tu” in Espanol. It would be my subtle way of distancing myself from people who weren’t a member of my current inner circle. The inner circle that would, most obviously be called…

Paul Danger Davidson’s Inner Sanctum/Circle.

Adding the extra slash with the “circle” would be for those unsure of what “sanctum” meant and would free them up from having to consult such on-line word depositories like dictionary.com. And although I have a small fear that deep down there would be people who were not a part of my current inner sanctum who felt slighted by the fact that I hadn’t included them to be a part of my inner sanctum, I would just have to explain to them that of course there would still be a chance they could be a part of that inner sanctum and it takes time and there are waiting lists and such… And that they’d have to eat a bucket of living nightcrawlers if they wanted to prove their loyalty to the man whose middle name was ‘danger’.

Some people would sit around debating whether or not I had the right to give myself a middle name as dangerous as “danger.” They’d lament over the fact that there are other people in this world who have done far more dangerous things than I. Like people who risk their lives to save others in a myriad of situations from drowning in flood waters to car accident victims to cats in trees. They would complain that by yours truly accosting the middle name “danger” I had inadvertently reduced the danger-quotient of the word danger. Well, just as they were at the height of their dangerous back-talking, I would burst through a wall (soft wall, made out of very thin dry-wall) and show them just how non-dangerous I was.

Pauly D for Danger.

Out in public, up on Sunset Boulevard, I would become a legend. I would walk up to bars and ask for drinks and when I offered up my credit card to pay for the dangerous round of shots I had just purchased, the bartenders would most often look at the name on the credit card and just say “Wow.” “You’re Mr. Danger Davidson?” they’d ask.

“That’s right,” I’d say with a dangerous look on my face.

Sooner or later the situation would come to a head. Someone else who had acquired the middle name “Danger” would find their way to my inner sanctum and announce that there was to be a dangerous challenge that the two of us would have to take part in, in order to resolve the naming issue. I would utter something incoherent at the moment to try and throw off this wannabe-danger person in an attempt to get out of any violent confrontation because there’s nothing worse than having your face all mangled AND having the middle name “Danger” all at the same time. If it was me, looking at someone with the middle name “Danger” and their face was all beat up, I’d walk off muttering something under my breath about the fact that he couldn’t be that dangerous if he just got beat up.

Paul Seth Davidson.

When I think about it, now… And I weigh all the options, including the all-out fight I’m going to have to get into to defend the fact that I deserve such a middle name… Well, it seems smarter to me that I go ahead and abandon the potentially dangerous middle name. I mean, really… What’s so wrong with the middle name “Seth”?

That’s pretty damn dangerous, too.