I climbed the worn and weathered wooden stairs to the ancient shed’s second floor. Three of my neighborhood cousins who were the closest to my age followed. Bright morning sunshine peeked in between the building’s aged wall boards. We sat down on out-of-date equipment, the sort that accumulates in long-time family-run farm sheds.

Gray shadows inside the shed hid the bright colors of the summer shorts and tops our mothers had sewn for us, while the bright shafts of sunlight highlighted narrow strips of blazing color. Filled with a poorly thought-out kid-club fantasy, I suggested, “Let’s start a club. We could call it…” After stopping to think for a moment, I said, “The Cat’s Eye Club! This is such a cool shed. We could hold our meetings here.”

Barb, a year older than me, nodded and agreed, “That sounds like fun.”

Alice, a year younger than me, brushed dust off her leg, commenting, “Mom doesn’t like having us play in this shed.”

Donna, who was the same age as me, asked, “What would we do as a club?”

She had me there. I couldn’t think of a single activity for Cat’s Eye Club members to do. It didn’t matter. Our meeting place, the dangerously interesting shed, was torn down later that summer.  

I don’t remember how I came to think of a name such as the Cat’s Eye Club. The name sounded exciting and mysterious to me. When I couldn’t think of activities for club members to do, I felt grumpy. Even if I had thought of activities that didn’t fit with the cat’s eye club name, such as making friends with all the neighborhood dogs, I wouldn’t have changed the name. I dislike it when clubs, places, and things I’m used to suddenly change to something new. Why change something that is familiar and accepted?

It is easy for me to think someone is just messing around and changing things on a whim, so I like to look into why the change was made. I’ve discovered that when locations change names, or prayer responses change in church, it is often a return to what was said originally. Also, many school mascots and locations have taken new names in recent years because their original names were offensive to certain segments of our society.

In 2015, after about forty years of behind-scenes work, Mount McKinley in Alaska officially changed back to Mount Denali, which it had originally been named by native Americans. There are some indications that Mount Rainier will someday also return to what the Puyallup tribe had named it long before most of us were born. Depending on who finalizes the decision, it will be called Mount Tacoma, Tahoma, or Taquoma.

Elon Musk changed the name of Twitter to, X. I don’t think the name-change will stick. It might be too soon to tell, but it is a bad sign that everyone refers to the social media platform as, “X, formally known as Twitter.” The shortened name is now longer.

Some changes just make me shake my head and question, “Why?” “What good will come to us as a result of this change?” For example, many years ago the Rosary Altar Society at Catholic parishes suddenly became known as the PCCW. The first name tells me what the women enrolled in the society did, the second name is just alphabet soup to me.

At my church I belong to the RCIA team. RCIA stands for Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults. Last week, our deacon told me that the name of our formation class is changing to OCIA, which stands for Order of Catholic Initiation for Adults. I don’t think substituting the word, order, in place of the word, rite, makes what we do any clearer. I just smiled at him and said, “Deacon, I’m going to just continue calling it the RCIA, okay?”

Many years have passed since that sunny, early summer morning my neighborhood cousins and I wanted to start a club in the rickety shed. It took me a long time but now, at long last, I have the answer to Donna’s question, “What would we do as a club?”

We could have been like little Nancy Drews in training! While on our bike rides, we could have kept our cat’s eyes open to watch what was going on in the neighborhood. We could have kept track of interesting things we saw, like who were in the cars that passed us, all the pets and wildlife we saw, and unfamiliar cars parked in the neighbor’s yards.                                              

Famous Name Changes

NASA launched the last of the Mercury missions from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the fall of 1963. John F. Kennedy, who had the goal to have Americans to be the first to make a successful moon landing, visited the site six days before he was assassinated.

Twelve days later, newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson issued an executive order renaming the area, “Cape Kennedy” to honor the late president. The name change was not popular in Florida.

In May 1973, the Florida Legislature restored the 400 years-old Cape Canaveral name. The Kennedy family issued a letter graciously stating they “understood the decision”. NASA’s Space Center at that location retains the Kennedy name.