CARLTON FLETCHER: The urban myth of ‘Lemonjello’

“It’s lonely where you are, Come back down, And I won’t tell ‘em your name.”

— GooGoo Dolls

I got into this discussion with a doctor I know, like and trust a lot, and it turned into one of the funniest conversations I’ve had in a while. It’s a conversation I’m willing to bet a whole lot of you have had as well.

Show of hands: How many of you have had someone you know tell you about children named “Lemjello,” “Oranjello” and — my favorite — “Shithead?” (Before you complain, everyone knows that that last one is pronounced “sha-theed” … it’s all about the semantics.)

I would bet that an overwhelming number of you who read this have had someone swear that a nurse they know or that an OB doc their cousin’s girlfriend’s hair dresser’s orthodontist knows or at least someone who watched a classic episode of the Jerry Springer Show swears that they’ve met or heard of real people with these names … they’ve seen the birth certificates.

Of course, it’s all a bunch of hooey … an urban myth like that one about Phil Collins actually seeing someone drowning and not helping out because he’d seen the person involved in illegal activity (in “In the Air Tonight”) or how the kid in the old “Mikey likes it!” commercial (not that awful new one with the girl Mikey) died when he mixed Pop Rocks with an RC cola or the one about the girl who went out with a new boyfriend who drugged her and when she woke up she was in a tub of ice, her kidney harvested for sale.

These things take on a life of their own, but I have heard from dozens of people over my lifetime about good old Lemonjello and Shithead.

(SIDE NOTE: In all honesty, 99.9% of the people who repeat this stupidity and swear to me that they “absolutely know it to be a fact” — and then give the source of their knowledge — are white people who say that the kids so-named are African-American, as if persons of a particular race are so stuck for a name for their offspring that they’d use these far-fetched monikers as a last resort.)

(WHILE WE’RE AT IT, SIDE NOTE II: My favorite story about a really bad name is Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” written by Shel Silverstein, about a boy who fights through his life because of his name and vows revenge on his father for giving him the name. Silverstein, who wrote the touching classic kids book “The Giving Tree,” it should be noted, is a prolific writer of slightly off-center pop songs, with hits that include “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” “Sylvia’s Mother,” “Freaking at the Freakers’ Ball” and “Queen of the Silver Dollar” — all performed by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show — and the Irish Rovers’ “Unicorn Song.”)

As I laughed with the aforementioned doc about the nonsense names, he said people in medical facilities where he’d worked swore that they’d seen the birth certificates of babies so named, but, thankfully, he didn’t say that he’d actually seen such birth certificates. Had he done so, I probably would put off that procedure that’s eminent a few years longer … like until a couple of months after I’ve been cremated.

So, no, it doesn’t matter how vehemently your source has been in assuring you he or she absolutely knew that there are people who are actually named Lemonjello, Oranjello and Shithead, don’t be so gullible as to believe him or her. Consider the conversation that led to this revelation and question the intent. Or just write it off as one of those occasions we all love … passing on the odd bits of minutiae that are the creations of people with too much time on their hands.

Me? I’m holding out until the day that someone named Shithead Jones shows me his driver’s license. And believe that I’m checking it over to make sure it’s not a fake. Then, maybe, I’ll believe.