TIFU by naming a jokingly naming a blue-jay "BJ"

A couple years ago, when I was about 15, a massive storm surge hit our house during the summer. It was one of those phenomenons that rips branches from the trees, turns the sky purple, floods different areas, and essentially creates a clusterfuck of chaos. I know people in other parts of the world have it far worse with natural disasters, but for a relatively sheltered kid living in suburban Georgia, big storms are sort of our “natural disasters.”

They cause plenty of damage to homes by way of falling trees, and often result in power outages. And at the end of these things, I always remember coming outside like I’d just survived the apocalypse, venturing into a new world filled with terrifying branches scattered about my driveway and, of course, looking for survivors.

After this particular storm, I ended up discovering a little, half-fledged blue-jay. It sat stunned out in our driveway, probably thrown around during the storm. At the time my parents were gone, so it was just me and my 9-year-old sister.

Being the good souls we were, we decided to help the little guy get back on his feet. We ended up taking an old aquarium and filling it with twigs, towels, and birdseed before moving this stunned creature into its new home.

From there, the next logical step was to give our newfound pet a name, so I jokingly suggested calling it by its initials. Unfortunately my little sister loved this idea, and before I could do anything else, they were dead set on feeding her little “BJ.”

Fast forward to my mom coming home, and I, having spent a considerable amount of time suggesting other names like Jellybean or Blue or Jizzanthepuss, frantically searched for another moniker. Anything but this horrible misnomer that I knew would land me in deep shit. I felt kinda bad for my mom too, because she came home relatively tired and the first thing that greeted her was my sister thrusting the bird in her face and saying, “Look at our BJ!”

My mom took a couple moments to process this new development: the adolescent bird, her beaming daughter, the awful name, and then she focused on me. I only smiled guiltily, willing to go along with it and shrugged. “We got a BJ in the driveway.”

The tricky part of this entire fuck up was my little sister was 9, and my mom, who spent a lot of time with younger kids as a teacher at our church, was rather sensitive about what they could absorb. Honestly, the best thing would’ve been to tell my sister straight out, but I guess my mom thought it better for her to get it out of her system.

This didn’t stop her from giving me an earful when we were alone though. She explained how inappropriate it was, but as a 15-year-old male I thought it was pretty ingenious.

Now looking back on it, I think my mom was actually willing to let the entire ordeal go. Especially given we’d rescued little BJ with good intentions. But things only escalated from there when my little sister had a friend over for a playdate.

She spent the entire afternoon with her friend, who we’ll call Erica, and the two of them treated little BJ like their baby. Throughout the day, my mom would glare at me when the term “BJ” cropped in some innocuous way. “Let’s take BJ outside!” “Let’s let BJ fly between us!” "Let's give BJ a bath!" I continued to think it was brilliant, a hilarious scheme for which I could not be blamed. But then my mom got revenge, and this was where the fuck-up bit me in the ass.

Erica’s mother eventually returned to pick her daughter up and the first thing she said, having spent all day with little BJ was that she wanted to "get a BJ for herself." Just like my mom, Erica’s mother did a double-take, not sure she’d heard correctly. Then she went to talk to my mom in private and, after a couple minutes, the two of them came back smiling.

They’d decided it was better for the girls to know what BJ stood for, and they decided to let me impart that little nugget of birds and bees wisdom on their little darlings. Suddenly I was in a tight place, as the girls continued to fawn over the little blue-jay, I gave a very quick, Urban-dictionary style rundown of what it was.

I still cringe at their reactions during my explanation; a mixture of wide-eyes, revulsion, and “boys are so gross!” from them and laughter from the moms. I only wanted to die, feeling what had started as a rather brilliant fuck-up on my part spiral into a conversation fraught with awkwardness. And poor little BJ had to sit through all as his birth name came to light/

*Important Note: Since I know you critical bastards will demand evidence, here’s a couple pics of BJ in the flesh...er feathers: Links to Lil’ BJ: https://imgur.com/a/n9k1E

I also learned a very valuable lesson here: Don’t fuck with my mom. She’ll get you back in a twisted way that ends with you learning something important.

TL;DR We rescued an adolescent blue-jay, I jokingly named it BJ, my little sister loved that and stuck with the name. My mom had to deal with her nine-year-old shouting “BJ” all over the house and I ended up having to explain what a blowjob was to both my little sister and her friend.

*Slight Edit: BJ did end up recovering a couple days later and flew away. And for those of you doubting I actually had to tell the two girls what a BJ was, I'm curious how old you were when you began to get the birds and the bees talk.