Angie Klink

A Girl Named Lipp

Angie was born in Frankfort, Indiana, a small town with countless Lipps. When she was four, she and her parents moved 45 miles north to Lafayette where Lipps were few and far between.

"Hey, got a fat lip?" "Lipton Tea!" "Don’t lip-off to me, Lipp!" Oh, how Angie wished her last name was Smith or Jones - something ordinary that blended into the school woodwork when the teacher called the roll. She longed for a moniker that didn’t rattle around inside the empty-heads of mocking kids. But, no, she was a girl named Lipp.

"L-I-double-P," was how her mother spelled their surname to secretaries with important forms. (As a preschooler, Angie thought "double-p" was a letter of the alphabet.) When her father spelled their family name, he said, "Lipp with two ‘p’s’ - one for the upper lip and one for the lower."

When she was six, Angie introduced herself to a new neighbor girl using her full, God-given name. She said, "My name’s Angela Rose Lipp." The friend was a little slow - when she came to the house to play she greeted Angie’s mother with, "Hello, Mrs. Roselipp."

Evidently, her parents didn’t think about the absurdity of her middle name sided with her last. On the few occasions that Angie’s middle name got into the wrong hands (or should we say mouths?), she heard, "Hey, rosy lips." She didn’t dare tell the name-callers that a few miles away, in Frankfort, lived her Uncle Red Lipp and an Uncle Pig Lipp (Red and Pig were nicknames, of course.) That, as they say, was another story.)

So, She’s a Lipp - now brave enough to announce her name on the worldwide web, the biggest roll call of them all - safely hidden behind the bars of her married name of Klink, which means "jail" in German. She springs Lipp from the Klink when she wants people to know how proud she is of her steadfast, God-loving family of Lipps.

With that, Angie offers a big kiss to every one of her Lipps.