Amber

Jennifer called me Amber for an entire year.

It started out innocent enough. The first time I met Jen, I had a class with her, and a girl named Amber. Amber and I quickly became friends while Jen sat on the opposite side of the room in a different clique. I think that’s where she got the name Amber.

The next semester, Amber had graduated and Jen and I were in another class. Different cliques, too. And one day, I heard her saying “Hi, Amber!” I ignored it, of course, because that’s not my name. When I looked up from what I was doing, she was looking straight at me and saying “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, totally fine. How are you?”

And it began. Every day, she’d walk into class, say “Hi, Amber!” I’d always pause, look at her to make sure she was talking to me, and say hi back. And, just my luck, I’d see her everywhere. Walking across campus, in restaurants, in stores. Every single time, I’d get “Hi, Amber!”

By the time I realized what she was doing, it was way too late to politely point out that my name was not, in fact, Amber. Even other classmates noticed and didn’t have the heart to tell her. They’d sit next to me, smirk and look at their hands whenever she said “Amber”. It was a joke.

When I talked to the real Amber, she told me the strangest thing. She said that when people forget her name, or get it wrong, they generally lean towards “Mandy”. I still haven’t found a reason for this strange phenomenon. The only thing I can guess is “Amber” and “Mandy” have the same number of letters in them.

Jen and I had so much in common, too. We were both Loganites, we both went to the College of Eastern Utah, we were both SUN Center Presidents. She was two years behind me at CEU, but she had to have seen my name. It’s plastered all over SUN Center documents, it’s engraved in the list of presidents in the SUN Center office, it’s listed on the website, on reports, everything she’d have to deal with as the president. I even won the Halamandaris Award, which SUN Presidents usually do. (Except for Jen. Maybe that’s why she chose to not remember my name.) We’d even had lengthy conversations about Price, volunteers, Kathy, the SUN Center Director, the food bank, the school, the dorms. We’d had the same college career. I was sure as soon as I brought all this to her attention, it’d click in her head that my name is not “Amber”. Nope. She still pegged me with the wrong name.

Somewhere, during Jen’s Year of Amber, another classmate, Carli, started calling me “Amber”. They didn’t know each other, as far as I know, and the three of us never had a class together. Two separate people in my life were calling me “Amber”. And then Ryan, my best friend since high school, became engaged to an Amber. It was all so confusing.

Thankfully, Jen graduated last semester. I no longer had to worry about being called Amber. I could finally be Mandy on campus again. Ahhh…the relief. I no longer had to listen for a name that was not mine.

But alas. I landed in another class with Carli.

Shit.

In the two seconds it took for me to register that this girl was going to call me “Amber” and I’d have to spend another four months answering to a name that was not mine, she pulled out the seat next to her and motioned for me to sit down. Great. Here we go, Amber.

I greeted her, happily, and we made small talk, caught up on what we’d been doing in the last semester, all the niceties that classmates do. During a pause in the conversation, the Name Gods bestowed upon me an opportunity that I’ll never, ever get again.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but for the life of me, I can’t remember your name.”

Oh, man. What do I do? Do I tell her the truth or do I royally screw with the girl? Do I say “Amber” or “Mandy” or “Sarah” or “Jason”? Do I tell her that she called me “Amber” last semester, but my name is really Mandy? What to do, what to DO???

“My name is Mandy. You’re Carli, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

I watched her process that information. I could see the word “Mandy” tumbling around in her head, because it just wouldn’t sit quite right. I knew that she was so sure my name wasn’t Mandy.

“Did you go by anything else?” she asked, with her brow furrowed perfectly.

Crap.

“Nope. Always just Mandy.”

“Hmm. Ok.”

And that was the end of it. I haven’t been called “Amber”, at least, to my face, for three months now.

Who knew your own name could be so liberating?