The Name Game

To change my name or not to change my last name, that is the question. I've never really thought about changing my last name if I got married. Well, I've thought about it, but it was always that I wouldn't change my name. You see, I've already changed my name before.

My given name is my father's last name and not the one I actually go by. By the time I got to be school aged, my father was not living with us. Since my parents never married, even though my father asked my mom on more than one occasion, she retained her maiden last name. People at my school just didn't seem to get it that I had a different last name than my mom. They were always losing my permission slips and other paperwork because our last names didn't match. I went to the same school from kindergarten to 8th grade, you'd think that they would have figured it out by then. They didn't.

Things between my father and I started to turn sour right before Jr. High. Because of this and being tired of the extra work I always had to do because my last name was different than my mom's, I decided to change my last name to my mom's maiden name when I was 14 years old. And change it I did. All by myself.

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