There’s a Justin that lives next door. Several months ago, another family moved in down the block and brought another Justin with them. Thankfully, this one is much more intelligent and far less annoying, so it was with relief that my oldest son started playing with New Justin and his brother more often than the now less-interesting Next Door Justin.

Last week another family moved into a long-vacant house at the end of the street, across from New Justin’s digs. As it turns out, they, too, have a boy in the same general age group. One whose name is also Justin. According to this handy java applet “Justin” is on the wane as a popular moniker, but you couldn’t tell, apparently, from walking down our street. In the meantime, we’ve devised a much more efficient and scalable nomenclature, and now refer to them as J1, J2, and J3. Amusingly, this scheme was so transparent to our own kids that they readily picked it up.

What’s scary is that there are two vacant houses on our block, and two more that the current occupants are in the process of vacating. This raises the unlikely but real possibility of an additional four more Justins. It’s silly, but the thought is just kind of unnerving, and I can’t put my finger on why the idea should bother me so.