sandra by any other name.

First, a conversation that happens over and over in my life.

Some Other Person: Is it Sondra or Sandra?
Sandra: Sandra.
SOP: What about Sandy?
Sandra: Sandra. Sandy is my mother.

I realize that I have a thing about my name. I think it's perfectly reasonable, but others seem to think that I'm just being picky or sensitive. These people are named things like Jim or Ann. Their names are never mispronounced, and so they do not understand. It's just a word! Rose by any other name and whatnot.

My obsession comes from a couple of places. One is direct from my mother. She gave me this name, but she was just sharing her own. See, when you have six kids, you apparently run out of names towards the end (there being only six names in the entire world), and so the last one ends up with the same name as her mother. I hated my name when I was younger. Like most little girls born in the eighties, I was going to change my name to Tiffany as soon as I turned sixteen. But as I grew up, I realized that my name was pretty much stuck to me. No, I still don't particularly like it, but I dunno. It's mine. Incidentally, the thought of changing my name to Tiffany now makes my blood turn cold.

My mother should have realized that having two Sandras in the house would just be confusing. Sure, she went by Sandy, but every telephone call was a mystery.

Unknown Caller: May I speak to Sandra?
Mama: Would you like Sandra the adult or Sandra the child?

Of course I took offense to that round about age thirteen. I was no child. So she started asking the caller if he'd like to speak to Sandra the adolescent, which was just lame, geez, Mama, you're embarrassing me. Finally, she called me Sandra the teenager, which I deemed acceptable. No matter what word she used, the person on the other side was usually just confused by the question. A lot of them were telemarketers, and the question about Sandra the adult versus Sandra the child/adolescent/teenager was not in their scripts.

But maybe I shouldn't blame my poor mother, who was only passing down what she had been given, along with the hips and the eyes and the thighs. She wanted to name me Dinah (actually, there are seven names in the entire world, but the seventh one is Dinah). I'm glad she didn't, just because I would tired of all the jokes about being in the kitchen.

The real blame here should go to my birth placement in my family. It was because I was born sixth that I was named Sandra, and it was because I was born sixth that I was called the name of every child before me. I already had identity issues trying to make myself stand out among the crowd that was my family. People would get our names mixed up and so I started taking piano or karate or gymnastics classes to be different. Mostly I was called Carla, the fifth child's name. I came along six years after her, but for some reason, a lot of my teachers got us confused. I cannot tell you how much I hated that. Part of that was because I was ten and didn't have actual problems in my life. It did not help that I had a strained relationship with my sister, the one actually named Carla. In elementary and middle school, it was a pretty regular occurrence. One of my teachers wrote me a hall pass with her name on it. The absolute worst, though, was on Award's Day in seventh grade, when my AG teacher said the wrong name to announce who had received an award. You know, on the microphone. In front of, oh, everyone. I had no choice to laugh and act like it was cool, but I was pissed (and humiliated, demoralized, made to feel insignificant, etc., etc., and so forth). I think the worst part was that my sister was there, and she naturally thought it was hilarious.

Now you're all feeling sorry for me, because you have to admit that story could have been on The Wonder Years, it was so fraught with adolescent (teenage) strife. But I must have gotten over the incident, because I had completely forgotten about it until I happened to find a very angry journal entry from eleven years ago about it. Incidentally, I got mad all over again once I remembered. And so as I am remembering all that turmoil I went through over being called the right name, I'm realizing both how big of a deal it was and that I've become okay with it. Maybe that's because no one calls me Carla anymore and I'm the only Sandra at my residence. If someone calls me by the wrong name, I do correct them, but I haven't started taking gymnastics again.

Of course, a woman I hadn't seen for a couple of years called me by my other sister's name, Rita. I was again unamused, but I think it's because Rita is twenty years older than I am.

Not cool.