Sass: 867-5309 or So Much for Anonymity

I've been thinking alot lately about my name. Since my name is Jennifer I share it with half of the planet, or so it seems. I know this wasn't my parents' intention for me. They didn't know that what they thought was a nice, somewhat unique name for their newborn daughter would become so popular. I was born in the era of "Jennifer and Michael." Although, now that I think about it, maybe it was "Jennifer and Jason." I went by "Jenny" until 8th grade when I adopted "Jennie" because I was a dork of 90210 proportions.

Anyway.....

I've also read some stories lately of people changing their first names. Jacob in the Bible became "Israel." Sarai became "Sarah" and Abram became "Abraham" when God promised to bless them with a child in the future. There are other, non-Biblical people who have changed their names after life-changing events. After living 27 (nearly 28) years of being just another "Jennifer" and after having faced many challenges and a couple of crises, I can understand why. You are just not the same person that started this journey and if you like the person you've become a lot better than who you were, changing your name becomes very appealing.

Just yesterday I was trying to tell my co-worker about how there were five girls with the name "Jennifer" in my sixth grade class. Seriously, we had to go by our last name initial. So we had: Jennifer A., Jennifer B., Jennifer C., Jennifer Sk., and Jennifer Sp. Yeah, that last one was me. Because once you are not only sharing a first name with a classmate but your surname starts with the same letter you have go to the next letter and soon you feel like a bent index card in the old-school card catalog at the library.

So I was telling this co-worker about all that when he burst out laughing and singing, "867-5309!!!" Hilarious. Especially because I've never heard that one before. Hum.

However the joke is on him because, eventhough I didn't have the heart to tell him, I was only in the lower grades of grammer school (think Preschool and Kindergarten) when that song, 867-5309 hit the airwaves whereas he was what? Oh yeah, older---much, much older.

But....I'm Jennifer and that's that. I couldn't go against the name my parents chose for me. It'd break their hearts. Although I might become known as "Jennifer-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong." Just to be different.