Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Changing Your Name & Handwriting Makes You Cooler


Ever change your handwriting or name as a kid?
As if it would make you any cooler...
Every time I visit Starbucks, I give them a different name. Sometimes I give them my middle name, other times I give them my husband's name (if he's with me) ... There's just something I don't like about them yelling out my name when my nonfat Latte is ready. Plus, they often get my name wrong, so why give them my real name if they'll just call me Sally, Amy or Haley instead?

So today, I told the Starbucks chick that my name was "A.J." and it brought me back to 7th grade. No, not because of A.J. Slater from Saved By The Bell, but because I was a nerd who spent a week trying to become a different person. I thought "A.J." sounded better than my real name. I figured if I took my first initial and middle name initial, it would make me some super cool chick. It obviously never stuck and looking back, it's silly.

I posted today's Starbucks incident on my personal Facebook page adding that it brought me back to junior high. People agreed that as kids, there's usually a time when we want to become someone different. Many said they tried using different handwriting. I totally did that!  

Did you try to get a new nickname to stick or alter your handwriting in anyway? Post it below. It'll be nice to know I wasn't that strange of a kid.


10 comments:

  1. I definitely tried to change my handwriting when I was about 13! Unfortunately for me (and anyone who has to read my writing) it sort of stuck and my 13 year old attempt to have "fancy" handwriting means that my T's and H's are stuck together, the last stroke on lone H's dip down into the next line, and handwritten things are sprinkled with print styled lowercase A's. Even before that though I remember trying to change my handwriting to look like the cute bubbly letters that other girls did.

    I guess I'm just thankful most things are typed now!

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  2. I worked on my handwriting, but no matter how I changed the style, it was still much too messy looking. I've pretty much printed my whole life.

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  3. Actually I went through so many nicknames that my dad said, "Pick one!" I used the other one in the children's book I wrote (link on my blog if you want to check it out.)

    I have tried to change my handwriting to something legible, unsuccessfully, throughout my entire life!

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  4. I went through a phase in high school where I thought it would be cool to change the spelling of my name from "Helen" to "Helyn"

    I guess kids do the strangest things in order to be different!

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  5. Yep, I did a little of both but hadn't really remembered until you mentioned it.

    (P.S. It was A.C. Slater (not A.J.))

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  6. I still do that at age 44. Lol!!!!!

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  7. I still try to change my handwriting. I actually write like I have a split personality. I think it is because I changed my writing style so often. One paragraph will be nice and round and cute and the next will be all slopey.

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  8. I did experiment with my signature. Until the 6th grade, I always used the standard cursive T for Tom that I was taught. I thought this was boring, so began experimenting with my own inventions. I settled on one and used it for about a year or two, before stylizing it a little more and settling on that one for the last 30 years or so. The weird thing is, it's the same way my Great-grandfather after whom I'm named wrote his. And I'd never seen his signature before. Queue Twilight Zone music.

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  9. This also reminds me of the time I wrote a "love note" in a different handstyle emulating what I thought was a girl's handwriting (all loopy and bubbly, hearts for "i" toppers, etc.) in a an effort to make my friends think I had a girlfriend. I know, pathetic.

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