Monday, August 1, 2011

What's in (or not in) a name?

Ok, so it's not an original line....but I figured you might be wondering about my sign-off.  Molly (not Mary).  My "official" name is Mary, but the name I go by is Molly.  Now, in my opinion (and practically everyone else's too) these two names are far enough away from each other to be TWO SEPARATE NAMES.  Ahem, Mom and Dad.  If you are confused, you're not the first.  Read on to clear up the confusion...

I am the oldest in my family.  My parents decided that if I was a girl they wanted to call me Molly (actually my mom decided that; my dad got shot down with Shannon and Kelly.  I always thought those were pretty names though...) but really name me Mary. ??  Apparently Mary was the "official, saint's name" that they wanted me to have, but they preferred Molly.  Whatever, it's just a couple of names right?!

Wrong.  It was embarrassing in pre-school (I think we still have a pic of me on my first day wearing a "Mary" nametag all day.  I was too scared to tell them it wasn't my name), still embarrassing in middle- and high-school ("Katie?"  "Here"  "Mary?"  "Here, but I prefer to be called Molly" "Haha--Mary!"), a hassle as I entered the working world of paychecks and official forms ("We can't cash this check for you Ms. O'Keefe--it is made out to 'Molly'), and a downright identity crisis today.  See, I recently got married and decided to keep my last name.  Now if someone unwittingly writes me a check or fills out something for me, it's likely the person does not exist.  Molly Schildgen isn't even a real person!  So here I type, Mary O'Keefe, asking that age-old question Billy Shakespeare lit in all our minds: "Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?"  Will a blogger by any other name blog as sweetly?

Yes she will...read on and I'll prove it.

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