And may she never learn the truth.

(Redundancy alert: I've posted this to Tumblr, too.)

Every morning, I walk the dog around the perimeter path that surrounds the sweet little park in my neighborhood. After two years, it’s become a very comforting routine — once around the park, dog business done, then home for breakfast — and it’s a beautiful time to be awake in Brooklyn. The streets are quiet, the light that filters through the sycamore canopy is soft, green, and lovely, and the only people out and about are fellow dog owners, elderly and early-rising Greenpoint lifers, and a raucous group of Polish-speaking gentlemen who spend their summer nights on the park’s benches before waking up to drink more vodka.

Every morning, as I round the northeastern bend of the perimeter path, I see a man and a woman sitting together on a bench. Their names are Franny and Sunny, and they’re best friends; each day, unless it is raining, they meet up to sit at this particular spot with cups of coffee, and sometimes a newspaper, and watch the neighborhood wake up.

And every morning, we have the following exchange:

I say, “Good morning!”

They say, “Good morning.”

And then Sunny, who adores animals, will wave at the dog and say, “Good morning, Curley!”

And then, we continue on our way.

There’s just one, minor problem: My dog’s name is not Curley.

We are well past the point at which I can reasonably try to fix this, right? I mean, we’ve got a routine going, Sunny and Franny and me. And I am not about to flout the carefully-cultivated rhythm of our daily exchange by suddenly stopping short and throwing out this potentially life-altering conversational curveball: “Oh, and by the way, you’ve been calling my dog by the wrong name since 2007.”

These people are in their seventies, for Pete’s sake. The shock could kill them.