I listen to YouTube videos while I work. It helps me focus. About half of my job is waiting for PDFs to download, so I can successfully hear whatever I have on without screwing anything up. I listen to a great many subjects, including true crime and pop culture.

My favorite from the latter is the Professor of Rock, who’s this middle-aged dude in a bowling shirt and a trilby hat, spending twenty minutes educating you on the history of just one song (although he sometimes does an album, sometimes a band). He focuses on the sixties through the nineties and grouses about music these days. If you’re lucky, he’ll tell a touching story about his dad, a rock music fanatic who introduced him to the subject.

Each show begins with the mystery, as the thumbnail and title only drop hints about the subject matter du jour. I mention this because I clicked on a video because the thumbnail said that the singer was inspired by a kid’s cartoon. The title said, “Band swept the world with the most memorable first line in rock history.” I love this show because every song, every album, every band is the greatest of all time. It’s good for the mood.

You may have guessed what today’s song was. I had no clue, even as he set up the mystery, then cut to the clip that was going to reveal the answer. The image now has this sepia tone to it that all photos from the seventies and eighties have. We now see a skinny, shirtless man with flowing, dark brown hair and ox-bow mustache, and he was screaming. Do you know what he was screaming? He was screaming the most memorable first line in rock. He was screaming, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!”

“Joy to the World,” by Three Dog Night was the bane of my existence. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when most people hear my name. And half of them have to tell me. There were the bullies who taunted me with it, the teachers who were just bein’ goofy, and my customer service clients at every non-office job I’ve worked. So far, no one at my current job has asked me about this song, but something tells me Work Dad is waiting for the right moment.

The thing is, I love my name. My parents told me once that they were going to call me Robert, then changed their mind. Can you imagine me as a Robert? I’d be manscaping.

But I think it’s cool that I’m Jeremiah. It suits me. The problem was, it was something I had to endure as a child. I tried changing my name to Jerry (how was that any better?), but I went back to Jeremiah in high school, though occasionally I went by Jerm (to be honest, I didn’t really love it).

In college, a lovely young woman shouted at me, “Dude! You should have been named Eugene!” I agreed and adopted Eugene as a nom de guerre. Obviously, I didn’t change my name, but it became a character in a series of short and long stories, as well as a complete novel. When I was waiting tables, I changed the name on my tag to Eugene, for reasons I’m about to get into.  

I worked weekends on Fridays and Saturdays, known as the Black Friday (and Saturday) of late-night family restaurants. Until the last customer left, we were dealing with drunken monkeys on acid. We had one woman who stuffed feminine hygiene products in her ears, nose, and mouth and ran around, shouting, “I’m Tampon Lady!”

That and 85 percent of the tables had one spokesman who said, “You’re a bullfrog! You know that song?” Or, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog! You know that song?” Or. “Did you know you were a bullfrog? You know that song?” And so on. It got to the point where I just started telling them I didn’t know what they were talking about, and eventually they’d sing. That almost made it worth it. They only ever knew the first line.

Every once in a while, the Professor of Rock sits down with a member or two of the band and has a chat. The guy who wrote the song and the line that hung around my neck like an albatross met with the professor today. Prior to “Joy to the World,” Three Dog Night was making adult contemporary music, but after, they were rock superstars. The first line comes from an obscure cartoon frog who might have been an alcoholic. I don’t know if Jeremiah was the name of the frog, or if they just chose it because it has a great rhythm to it.

At the end of the episode, the Prof lists all the major artists who have done covers, as well as the most memorable TV and movie appearances. I don’t remember any of the ones from “Joy to the World,” though they left out the time Scully sang it to an injured Mulder, which I thought was a shame.

Pop-culture-wise, I don’t see or hear my name a lot. There was a short-lived TV show called Jeremiah, starring Theo from The Cosby Show. In Batman World, the founder of the insane asylum the Joker keeps escaping from is Jeremiah Arkham. He was also coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Other than that, you rarely hear my name despite it being unique and pretty good.

I’ve only known a small handful of people in my life named Jeremiah. Most of them go by different names (like JT, as one example). It’s so rare that, whenever I hear “Jeremiah,” they’re most likely talking to me. I got whiplash when at the Laundromat, a three-year-old kid named Jeremiah went on a rampage, and I kept hearing, “Jeremiah, stop it! Jeremiah, sit down!” Same when the couple behind me at the Panera Bread were having a loud conversation about someone named Jeremiah who was not me.

Jeremiah Murphy is a surprisingly popular name. Until it went down recently, jeremiahmurphy.com belonged to a black gospel singer, and jeremiahmurphy.net belonged to an unfunny comedian. Someone on Facebook named Jeremiah Murphy sent me a friend request, and a quick look revealed he was collecting Jeremiah Murphies. He had eight so far. In Indiana, I started getting collection calls for some douchebag named Jeremiah P. Murphy. The reason they kept calling is because, what were the odds of two people named Jeremiah Murphy in the state of Indiana? They were right. There weren’t two Jeremiah Murphies in Indiana. There were three.

I like being Jeremiah. It suits me. It’s got a great rhythm. If I had a different name, I’d use it in a piece of fiction. It would have made a great celebrity name if I had lived my life differently. It’s my name, and it’s perfect.

Just …

I am not a fucking bullfrog, okay? Jesus Christ!