a much younger me

As a firstborn, Daddy’s girl and still a bit of a tomboy, I now applaud my parents’ ability to create a girl’s name out of my father’s: Dale. But it wasn’t always so. My face still flushes when I recall how in jr. high school I would boldly scrawl “Niki King” in all caps across the top of all my homework. My embarrassment burnt even deeper by the teacher’s stern reprimand “Use your REAL name on your papers.” Props to the younger me, however, for pulling Niki from my middle name, Veronica, and for knowing the Latin meaning of my surname, Rex.

Because people in the northwest were generally unfamiliar with what is more or less Mormon nomenclature, by high school I was well used to the long pause that would occur on the first day of every new school year, as the teacher called the roll. It happened somewhere in between Rusty Nail and Dusty Surface.

[insert awkward silence here]

After some hemming and hawing and for lack of a better frame of reference, any given teacher would read “Rex, Dalene” and call out, “Darlene?”

“The ‘R’ is silent,” I would quietly suggest, knowing full well that because ‘R’ is rarely silent, this would prompt a second look at my seemingly unpronounceable first name.

“But there is no ‘R.’”

Exactly.

“Yeah–it’s DAY-leen, not Darlene.”

And then–long before the days of Caragh, Devaneke and Quathyryn–the teacher would quickly move on to something that would inevitably be much easier to pronounce.

Eventually I matured and, even before my father passed away when I was just 19, I grew to love and appreciate both the uniqueness of my given name and the fact that I was named for someone I loved. Imagine how surprised I was when a Daylene moved into the same hall at BYU’s Heritage Halls and when, the very next year, a girl whose middle name was Dalene moved in and became best friends with my younger sister.

I had a good laugh about my name change a few years back when, at about the same age I had been, my daughter Lindsay started writing her name L-y-n-d-z-i. And because I remembered, I understood. That year I ordered her birthday cake to read “Happy Birthday, Lyndzi!”

Now Lyndzi is back to Lindsay. And I like being Dalene. I’ve thought about it since, wondering why the younger me felt such a need to change it up. Although my name is unusual, I’m sure it wasn’t just about my name. It was also about finding myself, discovering both who I am and who I am not, and growing comfortable in my own skin.

Becoming Dalene.

How about you? Have you ever tried to be someone you weren’t? When did you decide you were good with who you are as well as who you are not? How did you figure it out? Or are you still getting there?

Related posts:

  1. Fifth Business
  2. The Onion of Age
  3. Showdown at the Ninth Ward Chapel


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