Prompt: Write an ode to your name. Reflect on how it sounds and makes you feel. What it means, where it came from and if there’s a story behind how you got it. How has it informed who you’ve become?
---
 |
| Michael Bolton |
Katherine? No. Kathleen? No. Kaitlyn, Katrina? No, dammit. Katy? Katey? Kathy? I give up.
It's a struggle - such a common name, five letters, two syllables. But some people just can't leave well enough alone. My legal name is Katie. No need to pick a random, more formal version to slap on official documents. And yet, that has happened before, more than once. I always wonder, how did they decide? "Heads, Katherine. Tails, Kathleen. Call it in the air."
The trouble with Katie, which really is a pleasant enough name, is that it's a universal nickname for so many others. Like, if you wanted to call your child Katie, that's what you should have named them. "Have you met our daughter, Mulva? Right now she goes by Katie, but someday she'll grow into Mulva." "This is little Murgatroyd, but we call him Katie."
Growing up, there were no less than six girls (out of, I dunno, maybe 60-80 kids) in my grade who answered to Katie. But I was the only one with nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. They had options. Kat, Kate, or, how about maybe their actual names? It made for plenty of resentment and confusion. Do you remember how embarrassing it was to answer a question when the teacher didn't actually call on you? To return a hello to someone who wasn't actually speaking to you? The horror.
To further complicate matters, I married into a family that already had a Katherine. Fortunately, my sister-in-law has the decency to go by Kate, and that one syllable makes all the difference. It doesn't eliminate all confusion, but we have developed workarounds. For example, my husband changed my name in his phone contacts to "Katie Wife" after the third time he texted his sister to bring home a steak and I came home empty handed.
And I'm not faulting my mom for any of this ambiguity. She went into this naming thing as prepared as one could be in the 80s, when gender scans were scientifically possible but not common practice. She didn't know what she was having, and after 24 hours of unmedicated childbirth, I could have been a potato and she would have loved me out of sheer relief.
She and my dad had a few potential names for either gender. For some reason they were all K names. Kyle. Katelyn. But when push came to shove and I was evicted from the womb and pronounced a girl, they came to an impasse. They couldn't decide, and my dad, like the real standup guy he was, wouldn't let my mom call her parents to tell them the news until they agreed on a name. My poor mom - it's a testament to her enduring patience that my legal name isn't Whatever The Hell I Say It Is, Larry, Because You Aren't The One Who Just Experienced a Solid Day of Back Labor.
That would definitely require a nickname. Katie would work.
I'll post a comment when I've stopped laughing with tears running down my face. Couldn't have said it better myself!!
ReplyDelete