Not an antedating

[James A. Landau]

I have a little problem that I am hoping the ADS list can help me with.

Actually it's a big problem.  Physically, that is, since it took up most of
the back seat of my car.

It's a teddy bear, the kind that you put on the floor and have children climb
over.  It was in my car in process of being delivered to a drug rehab clinic.
 My daughter, unsuspecting, got into the back seat and found herself
confronted with a large, round, soft object.  "It's like hugging Josh," she said,
referring to a large, round, soft male in her high school Drama Club.

(Josh boasts of being the only heterosexual male in the Drama Club, not a
particularly impressive claim when you learn that there are only two other males
in the Club, both of whom are named Phil.

My daughter says that the latest fashion in the gay community is to have as a
partner someone with the same name.  However, Phil and Phil are hardly
partners.  In fact they dislike each other intensely.  They could perhaps best be
described as "anti-dating".)

So Josh (as the teddy bear was now named) arrived at the drug clinic
yesterday, where he was an immediate hit.  (So much so that he had to be exiled to the
assistant nurse's "cloffice" to cut down on the congestion in the waiting
room.)  One staffer noticed a rip in Josh's leg, declared it was "track marks",
and started telling the patients "If a teddy bear can kick the drug habit, so
can you!".

The problem is that Josh is a she.  When lugging around this back-seat-sized
stuffed animal, I failed to notice that s/he (for once that compound pronoun
is needed for other reasons than feminist proscriptivism) was wearing a dress.
Unfortunately the name "Josh" is by now well-established.

Now for my request to ADS-L:  can anyone provide a plausible feminine form
for "Josh"?

            James A. Landau
            systems engineer
            FAA Technical Center (ACB-510/BCI)
            Atlantic City Int'l Airport   NJ   08405   USA

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