A Name

A Name

For more years than I want to admit, I've religiously watched the trailers of movies wanting to find the Downie name shown on the screen as a active participant of its filming. Certainly this form of narcissism couldn't be centered only on me. I wonder how many other people have my desire to see their
surname in print on the big screen? Even today, at my age, I enjoy the wait until the very end of the movie to see the acknowledgements flow, sometimes far too rapidly, across the screen. I've never seen my Downie name on a screen. I guess, Downie's must be lack luster at best and just a run of the mill family with no screen aptitude at all.

Long, long ago in Elizabethan Time it's been rumored a Downie ancestor, a fellow named John Dowie, was a drinking companion of Robert Burns, the poet bard of Scotland. Of course, drinking companions of Burns were quite plentiful. Often, as stories embellish themselves, the numbers of drinkers though palled in numbers compared to Burns' conquest over women, here he seemed to have few equals. He prided himself in pure numbers somewhat like me counting the names listed in movie trailers.

What's in a name, anyway? And, I'm too cheep, too Scottish, to pay ancestral search to find out. Rather, I'm willing to look incessantly at cinema trailers for the Downie name so I can dream some more about our place in this big World.

Ronald C. Downie