YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT I’M GETTING YOU FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY!

That was a line from “Newhart” when Dick Loudon was so utterly pleased with himself for the gift idea he’d had for his wife Joanna’s birthday. After a moment of thought, she responded, “You named a STAR after me!” Dick was immediately crestfallen as that was exactly what he’d done and couldn’t imagine that his wife would have guessed correctly on her first try.

This episode aired in February of 1985, and as this blogger was at that time an impoverished undergraduate student, I had never heard of the concept of naming stars after people. But I did have a working knowledge of the number of stars in the universe, and had an instant suspicion that the entire concept was, well let’s say, a scam. I turned to my boyfriend at the time and said, “If you ever even think of doing that for me, just give me the cash. That’s like naming a grain of sand after someone.”

And thus became the genesis for NAME A GRAIN OF SAND.