What's in a name?

Ok, listen up people. I'm going to write about something veeeerrry interesting. My name. Yeah, it's interesting, just keep reading....

First, I want you to imagine something. A tall, skinny woman with her hair in a bun and tiny round glasses on the tip of her nose. White button up blouse and a long, boring straight black skirt. Oh yeah, she's holding a ruler too. You know the type - stern, nagging and a prude. Got it? Ok..

Now, imagine her saying this... "Maryellen is ONE word - not two! It is NOT Mary Ellen and it is DEFINITELY NOT MaryEllen. They are together and the "E" is NOT capitalized. Got it, buddy!?"

Now that I've got this off my chest, I'll explain a little bit about my name. My mom decided to name me after the character, Mary Ellen from the Waltons. I like my name, I do, but I'm VERY picky about how it's spelled and what people call me.

My whole life, people called me "Mary" and for years, I've tried to get everybody to call me "Maryellen." It's much more sophisticated, right? Right! So... eventually, some people started calling me Maryellen and others just stuck with Mary. THEN - a creative ex-boyfriend came up with another name to call me... "ME."

One summer, I went to a youth camp (best summer of my life) and I had a boyfriend who will be called "E." We were all about the age of 15 - an age of immaturity and well, fun. One night, a bunch of boys were bored and decided to start shaving their heads. "E" decided he wanted to brand my name on his head, only "Maryellen" was way too long. So he decided to shave "ME" on the back of his head (yes, it really happened). As you can imagine, there were lots of buzz going on the next day regarding E's head. He received a lot of flak because everyone assumed he was talking about himself - as in... me. Poor E, he had to explain to EVERYONE who would listen (and poor me, I was utterly embarassed) that "ME" stood for MaryEllen.

Fast forward many years later. I have two close friends - let's call them P and C. We text each other lots and I guess "Maryellen" was just too long for them to type so they reduced to calling me "ME" when they text. Fun, huh? One day, they went to Wal-Mart or something (yes, without me!) and came across the DVD "I know Who Killed Me." Now, the title of the movie is in all caps so of course, me looked like "ME." So they started a running joke that the movie was about me. Ha-ha.

So there ya have it. The background, a funny story or two and how I want to be known as. I realize that I will probably spend the rest of my life correcting people but then again, maybe I should give up. I have determined that people are just... lazy.