Ollie calls me “Gaga.”
Except he doesn’t really. Or at least, not intentionally.
When he was younger, before everybody fully understood that he was non-verbal, we all thought he was trying to say my name.
Or something adjacent to my name. Or perhaps simply some specific sound he associated with me.
It happened often enough that eventually everyone started responding to it as though it were real language.
And, in a way, it became real language.
That’s one of the strange things humans do.
We assign meaning first and verify accuracy later.
Sometimes much later.
By the time Ollie’s world began making more sense through the framework of autism and non-verbal communication, “Gaga” had already settled into the relational architecture of the family.
It was too late to remove.
Not because anybody was in denial.
Just because meaning had already accumulated there.
I don’t think Ollie knows me as Gareth, or uncle.
Or any of the complicated adult relational categories we normally use to organise one another.
I think he knows me more the way very small people often know grown people: as recurring emotional geography.
Safe person.
Familiar person.
That house.
That voice.
That laugh.
That routine.
That presence.
And somewhere inside all of that:
“Gaga.”
There is something oddly moving about the fact that the name originated, at least partially, from misunderstanding.
A mistaken interpretation.
A coincidence that humans wrapped affection around until it became true anyway.
Which, honestly, is probably how many families work.
Not through perfect understanding.
But through accumulated meaning.
Repeated rituals.
Shared interpretations.
And enough love that eventually the distinction between “technically accurate” and “emotionally true” stops mattering very much at all.
Anyway.
There are worse things to become accidentally.