What's in a Name?

I just realized I have two new followers, and it's been too many days between posts, so if I want to keep my followers, they should have something to follow.

So here's a further sample of my literary brilliance....just a little something I like to call:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am having an identity crisis.

Not for the first time.

And it's nobody's fault but my own.

(Actually, it's my sister's fault.)

The part of the problem that is my fault is facebook. Yes. I have become a Lemming once again. And who's fault is that? My 20th High School Reunion Coordinator, that's who. She started spreading the word to people via the internet (what other way is there?), and I had to go and get all curious, wondering if anybody would remember me from the old days, and wondering if everybody has aged as gracefully as I have (ha! that's a good one!).....so I took the plunge...and now I'm addicted.

But there's a problem. I have too many names.

Many of you know me as Suzy. This is only natural, since this is the name I've been called from the first few minutes after I was born and my mother actually called me Suzanne. (In fact, I can't even remember my mother ever calling me Suzanne, not even when she was mad at me.) There was another Suzy in my high school class, and even though we didn't look a thing alike, my high school buddies started calling me "Swazz" to tell us apart. (This came from our P.E. uniform t-shirts, which were labeled on the back with our first initial and last name. Mine spelled out "S.Wasden" which became Swasden, which became Swazz...)

Then I had to grow up and graduate.

Part of the beauty of leaving home and going to college is entering a whole new world where no body knows you, or your personality, or anything about you... which means you can 'be' anybody you want to be! I was on the road to my own personal self-discovery at BYU when my sister, Judy, who had just graduated from the Y, handed over her old job as secretary in the Elementary Education department to me. I had arrived in Provo a few weeks early before the term was supposed to start so I could get acclimated and find my bearings around campus and my new job. Judy took me around the offices, introduced me to all the professors, including my old youth conference pal Brad Wilcox (who REMEMBERED ME!! How does he do that?!), until, after a while, I suddenly noticed something was wrong.

MY NAME.

She was introducing me to everybody as "Sue"!

Okay, even though my sister had known me for eighteen years, she had been at school for four of those years. Still, you'd think she'd remember my name, for goodness' sake!?

I asked her, "What's with the 'Sue'?"

To which she replied, "Sue sounds more grown up. You're an adult now -- and Sue just sounds better!"

Huh.

I had to think about that one. But she was a college graduate, after all, and I was a lowly freshman. She must have known what she was talking about, right?

So I went with it. My new boss presented me with a nameplate that read "Sue Wasden" to put on my new desk, and that's the day it became official. A week or so later when I moved into my new dorm, I picked up where my sister left off and told my roommates my name was "Sue."

Now, as I look back on that life-altering experience, I can't help but laugh at my reasoning. "Sue" was probably just as, if not more, immature as "Suzy" would have been. I did everything those co-ed jokes said co-eds were supposed to do: I slept out for football tickets, I painted my face blue and white for games, I "Rise and Shout"ed, I enjoyed two a.m. ice cream parties, and I even entered a dorm pageant where we had to make a dress out of garbage bags. Guess what kind of dress I made?

Yeah. Psychotic, pathetic co-ed. That was me.

My friends from home came to see me in my dorm and were like, "What the heck? Who's Sue?" I still put up with a lot of flack from them, but lately, it has become a bit of a difficulty, trying to decide who I am, when I'm supposed to be Sue, when does Suzy kick in, and will I ever figure it out before I'm too old and too gray to enjoy being anything else but "Granny"?

The really funny thing is, when Roy and I started dating, he started calling me Suzy Q, and he thought it was so cute until one of my friends from home called me Suzy, and Roy got all defensive and thought, "Hey! Only I can call her that!" I explained to him what I just explained to you, and it really bummed him out that he wasn't as original as he thought. Poor Guy.

So, from now on, to avoid any confusion, just call me George. I think that would be simplest.