Pieces of Me: The Name Game

[ellyssian]

Who am I?
Can I conceal myself for evermore?
Pretend I'm not the man I was before?
And must my name until I die
Be no more than an alibi?
Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellow men?
How can I ever face myself again?

Les Miserables - Who Am I?

When I was in second grade, I decided "Everett" was too stuffy and formal a name for me, so I changed it. I did this by refusing to answer to what I felt was an overly fancy name and by refusing to answer to what I felt was a childish nickname ("Ebby"). For more than ten years, I continued this refusal. And then, sometime shortly after high school, I began to use my name again - even my middle name, which I so dreaded that I once forced people to guess it.

Bubba, his girlfriend Maureen, Ryan, and I were sitting on a rocky outcropping somewhere in Stow (I think), at some time in our senior year. While I'm sure Ryan and Bubba really didn't care much, Maureen was determined to guess my middle name. Although I didn't answer to "Everett" at the time, I didn't hide it from them, and that led them (or her, anyway) on a mission to discover what the A stood for, especially after I explained that I changed from "Everett" because I didn't have what I felt was an acceptable middle name to fall back on, like my dad did. You see, he is an Everett, as was his dad, but the middle name was different for all of us. Even my older brother, who lived a whopping six months, was known as Andy, although was, in full, Everett Andrew.

All guesses were, of course, wrong, but I did give them the next letter if they guessed a name that had it - they got as far as "Amb", with the closest guess logged as "Ambulance."

Once I started writing, I didn't mind the name as much, and felt it made for a much better byline than the one I had assumed in second grade. I even include my middle name in full when I'm doing copyrights, and sometimes on the byline itself.

Just so you don't have to hunt down a poem (please do! I still don't have them all tagged, but poetry will get most of the ones I've posted on here!) or go through a painful guessing process, "Ambrose" is my middle name.

What was the name I went by from second grade to a few years beyond graduation?

For that, you're just going to have to guess! =)