For eight weeks my little boy Francis has been a green police car. He won't answer to his name, and to lure him to dinner, my wife Vicki and I stand in the kitchen and shriek like sirens. When Francis began nursery school last month, we thought the police car would be parked in the scrapbook along with the thirty or so pictures I took of him in the hospital and the safety pins which held his first diaper together. We were wrong; nursery school sent Francis into overdrive. In the hall outside the playroom at school is a row of coat hooks. Above each hook is a piece of tape with a child's name written on it. There amid the Meagans, Kevins, Davids, and Deidres in big bold print is GREEN POLICE CAR.

Francis's behavior arrested the attention of a neighbor, "Identity is important," she told me; "a person should always know who he is. Don't you think," she suggested, "that you should seek professional help for Francis." The word professional frightens me; everything I do is amateurish, and I am going to let Francis race around until he runs out of gas and then becomes something or someone else. Still, the neighbor's remarks were unsettling. When it comes to identity I am not so sure about myself. For 20 years I have lived in New England and would like to consider the northeast my home. Unfortunately, I have an accent that rolls like the hills of middle Tennessee. Hardly a day passes without someone's asking "where are you from?" When I answer "Storrs, Connecticut," people become irritated, thinking I am trying to make them appear ridiculous. If I say "Tennessee," I am uncomfortable because Southerners no longer recognize me as one of them.