25 Things #6: What's in a name?

A billion years ago (okay, thirty), I took offense at the nickname people were using for me, and I defiantly stated "My name's not Peanut, it's Mandy!"

A little over twenty years ago, I started to feel that Mandy didn't really fit me any more. I'd just started high school in a new school district, and I tried going by Amanda. Only I slipped up with one teacher and used Mandy in her class, so that some people were calling me Mandy and some were calling me Amanda and I got confused about which people knew me by which name. Plus, a new school full of new people was a little overwhelming, and the old nickname became a comfortable shawl, a link to an old life in the middle of a new one. I stuck with Mandy during high school, and shoved the nagging feeling that it really didn't suit me off into a dark corner of my brain.

The clincher came in college, when I discovered email. "Mandy" just looked weird when I typed it out. It was okay if it was referring to someone else, but that string of letters didn't apply to me. "Amanda" looked right.

Not being five anymore, I opted to politely request that people call me "Amanda", rather than sticking my hands on my hips and demanding to be called something else like I did when I adopted "Mandy" as a moniker. That worked in some circles, and not so much in others. Notably, I can't seem to convince my family to use the right name. Some of them will try, in response to Yet Another Politely-Phrased Request, but then someone else will use "Mandy" and they all instantly revert. For a long time, I shrugged it off. I was fighting over a decade of habit, what're you going to do?

And then my grandmother got sick. Or, more accurately, we realized just how bad her Alzheimer's actually was. For a complicated set of reasons that often boil down to "I didn't realize just how bad it would end up being", she and Grandpa moved in with us.

I'd like to take a moment to point out that as a kid, I spent as much time with my grandparents as I did with my mother, and that I was exceptionally close to them. If you can't connect emotionally to how difficult it is to watch your grandparents deteriorate, go ahead and swap in "mother" for "grandmother", "father" for "grandfather". I won't be offended.

There was no chance at all of getting Grandma to use a name other than "Mandy". So, for the better part of the darkest year of my life, that's what I was called. She'd stand at the bottom of the stairs and screech "Mandy, it's time to get up!" at 6am. Or 3am. Or 4:30pm. Any time she got out of bed, even if it was just after a nap, it was a Brand New Day for her. That lasted right up until she forgot my name.

From then on, my name was whatever popped out of her mouth. It started with "Mary" and "Mary Beth", my grandfather's first wife and his daughter, respectively. I could handle being confused with someone else. When she started sliding to different versions of "Mary", that got harder... "Mary Lou", "Mary Ann", "Mary Sue" showed up and disappeared again. Then it became "Nancy" and my personal favorite, "Gwendolyn". The dislike of hearing "Mandy, it's time to get up!" paled in comparison to the hatred of hearing "Gwendolyn, it's time to get up!" I started to hate nicknames in general. I've been called enough of them for one lifetime.

Grandpa never called me by other names (except "Beth" once in a while, when he'd get me mixed up with his daughter). But one of his quirks throughout his life is that he never pronounced "Mandy" with the "a" sound. It always came out sounding like "Mendy". Eventually, after Grandma was gone and Grandpa was on the tail end of his slide down, he'd have to ask me what my name was, and every time I said "Grandpa, my name is Mandy" he'd always nod and say "That's right, Mendy" and then he'd be okay for another few minutes until he'd have to ask me what my name was again.

Until one day, when he asked me what my name was, and I told him it was Mandy, and he repeated "Mandy" instead of his usual pronunciation. There was no light of recognition in his eyes at all. The light was never there again. Mandy is no longer just a nickname that I outgrew years ago, it's a small stab in the heart where someone I loved finally slid far enough into an abyss to forget who I was.

And it kills me every time my family blithely calls me "Mandy". Which is every goddamned time I talk to them.

25 Things #6: What's in a name?

A billion years ago (okay, thirty), I took offense at the nickname people were using for me, and I defiantly stated "My name's not Peanut, it's Mandy!"

A little over twenty years ago, I started to feel that Mandy didn't really fit me any more. I'd just started high school in a new school district, and I tried going by Amanda. Only I slipped up with one teacher and used Mandy in her class, so that some people were calling me Mandy and some were calling me Amanda and I got confused about which people knew me by which name. Plus, a new school full of new people was a little overwhelming, and the old nickname became a comfortable shawl, a link to an old life in the middle of a new one. I stuck with Mandy during high school, and shoved the nagging feeling that it really didn't suit me off into a dark corner of my brain.

The clincher came in college, when I discovered email. "Mandy" just looked weird when I typed it out. It was okay if it was referring to someone else, but that string of letters didn't apply to me. "Amanda" looked right.

Not being five anymore, I opted to politely request that people call me "Amanda", rather than sticking my hands on my hips and demanding to be called something else like I did when I adopted "Mandy" as a moniker. That worked in some circles, and not so much in others. Notably, I can't seem to convince my family to use the right name. Some of them will try, in response to Yet Another Politely-Phrased Request, but then someone else will use "Mandy" and they all instantly revert. For a long time, I shrugged it off. I was fighting over a decade of habit, what're you going to do?

And then my grandmother got sick. Or, more accurately, we realized just how bad her Alzheimer's actually was. For a complicated set of reasons that often boil down to "I didn't realize just how bad it would end up being", she and Grandpa moved in with us.

I'd like to take a moment to point out that as a kid, I spent as much time with my grandparents as I did with my mother, and that I was exceptionally close to them. If you can't connect emotionally to how difficult it is to watch your grandparents deteriorate, go ahead and swap in "mother" for "grandmother", "father" for "grandfather". I won't be offended.

There was no chance at all of getting Grandma to use a name other than "Mandy". So, for the better part of the darkest year of my life, that's what I was called. She'd stand at the bottom of the stairs and screech "Mandy, it's time to get up!" at 6am. Or 3am. Or 4:30pm. Any time she got out of bed, even if it was just after a nap, it was a Brand New Day for her. That lasted right up until she forgot my name.

From then on, my name was whatever popped out of her mouth. It started with "Mary" and "Mary Beth", my grandfather's first wife and his daughter, respectively. I could handle being confused with someone else. When she started sliding to different versions of "Mary", that got harder... "Mary Lou", "Mary Ann", "Mary Sue" showed up and disappeared again. Then it became "Nancy" and my personal favorite, "Gwendolyn". The dislike of hearing "Mandy, it's time to get up!" paled in comparison to the hatred of hearing "Gwendolyn, it's time to get up!" I started to hate nicknames in general. I've been called enough of them for one lifetime.

Grandpa never called me by other names (except "Beth" once in a while, when he'd get me mixed up with his daughter). But one of his quirks throughout his life is that he never pronounced "Mandy" with the "a" sound. It always came out sounding like "Mendy". Eventually, after Grandma was gone and Grandpa was on the tail end of his slide down, he'd have to ask me what my name was, and every time I said "Grandpa, my name is Mandy" he'd always nod and say "That's right, Mendy" and then he'd be okay for another few minutes until he'd have to ask me what my name was again.

Until one day, when he asked me what my name was, and I told him it was Mandy, and he repeated "Mandy" instead of his usual pronunciation. There was no light of recognition in his eyes at all. The light was never there again. Mandy is no longer just a nickname that I outgrew years ago, it's a small stab in the heart where someone I loved finally slid far enough into an abyss to forget who I was.

And it kills me every time my family blithely calls me "Mandy". Which is every goddamned time I talk to them.