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Trick or Treat
“Ah! It’s you! My friend Al told me you might be coming. Al is his name, you know? Do you speak English? Well, Al isn’t really his name. It’s what we call a diminutive. Can you say diminutive? His real name might be Alan or Allen or perhaps Albert. Well, it could be a lot of things. We have a lot of names that we cut down to ‘Al.’ There are also Alfred, Aloysius, Albin, Alphonse. Hmph! It could even be short for Alexander, although normally that would be shortened to Alex. Or Alec. Or Xander. Or even Sandy. I had a friend who went by Sandy, although his real name was Alessandro. That’s the Italian version of Alexander. It means the protector of man. Alexander means that, that is. Well, so does Alessandro. And even Alejandro, which is a Spanish version of the name. They all have the same meanings.
“But not Aloysius. That was originally a German name: Chlodovech. Means ‘Famous in War.’ Which the most famous Alexander was. Of course, he wasn’t named that. But Chlodovech became several other names over time, such as Ludwig, Luigi, and Louis. One version of Louis became Alois, and that was Latinized to Aloysius. Latinized means that someone tried to make the name sound as if it were Latin, as if some old Roman had been named Louis.
Sex sells, which I suppose is why @ejhill egged me on to write for Ricochet about one David Huggins, an elderly New Jersey man who claims to have long ago lost his virginity to aliens who have been visiting him ever since. (Huggins is the same fellow @majestyk briefly mentioned in 
