The mighty phoenix is a strong, firm, and powerful mascot to thrust onto the field, but some parents at Farmington High School in Utah don’t think phoenices should be running around where all the kids can see.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that anxious pater Kyle Fraughton is worried kids will be a target of mockery in their neighborhood because the plural of phoenix really sounds like “penises.”
“I looked on Google and a couple hits down I saw that the plural of phoenix was either phoenixes or phoenices,” Fraughton said. “I have no interest in my daughter or my son playing sports and getting referred to as something like a penis.”
Hmm, none at all? Weird. Fraughton started a petition on Friday to get Davis County to change the name, simultaneously alerting every bully who hadn’t already made the auditory connection. The phoenix has only been the school’s mascot for a month, winning in a vote against the “farmers” and the “eagles.” The school’s principal, Richard Swanson, has tried to allay fears by insisting that the word phoenix will never be pluralized.
“We are one,” Swanson said. “We are The Phoenix.”
Did he just say, “We are The Penis?” That’s messed up.
As of now, the petition has over 3,000 signatures. To be fair to Fraughton, he says he and the other adults who noticed the potential word play laughed about it when they first noticed, so their butt holes aren’t clenched completely shut. But their concern mounted, per the petition’s story:
We were horrified to hear that the phonetics of the word Phoenices are far too close to the word penises. I don’t mean to be crass, but don’t want there to be confusion around the point I am trying to make.
We’re not confused at all, you proud father of a Farmington Penis. May a name that can satisfy everyone soon resurrect itself from the ashes.