Personally Yours. But Not Mine.

Before it was possible to log onto the internet and order anything you wanted, with any name you could think of, people with unusual names were just shit out of luck.

Like me.

I remember, as a kid, walking into a store and seeing a display rack of oh, anything, and knowing, without even checking, that my name would not be among the ones displayed.

Whether it was a necklace, a zipper pull, a keychain, a coat rack for my bedroom, a baseball cap, a box to present the tooth fairy your tooth, or something as generic as a coffee mug. It wouldn't be there.

If you were a Jennifer or a Lisa or a Michelle, no problem. Those were generic, common names. Mark, Jason or Michael (like my brother)? No problem, you could buy anything you want. But not me. I used to look for my name among the Sheilas and Sues and Sarahs. Pushed aside the Sandys and Stephanies and Stacys to see if maybe, just maybe, someone had finally made something with my name on it.

I never found anything.

When I was sixteen, I went to my uncle's jewelry store and custom ordered a nameplate necklace, fifteen years before Carrie Bradshaw made them popular on Sex and the City. It was beautiful - diamond-cut in real gold, attached to a gorgeous rope chain with a seed pearl on each end of the name. I still have it. And it's still the only thing I own with my name on it.

I've actually grown to like the fact that I can't find my name anywhere. I've always loved my name. Always loved that it was unique and always loved that I almost never ran into anyone with the same one. In school, there was one girl I knew with the same name but she spelled it entirely different, and only until Selena the Mexican singer became popular, did I hear my name said with any regularity in places other than by people who knew me.

It's still an unusual name and to this day, doesn't matter where I go, doesn't matter how cool the item is, doesn't matter how off beat or high falutin' the store is, they won't have anything displaying my name. And that's okay. Oh sure, I can go to Things Remembered in the mall and have them engrave my name onto a cheesy Christmas ornament. And I'd have to spell it five times and likely, write it down. And even after doing so, there's still a chance it'll come out wrong.

But today, if I really want a coffee cup with my name on it, instead of just an "S", I know where to go.

And I know how to spell it - it starts with www.


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