My mom hated my first name. Every now and then this is a story I share with people. She hated the name Christina, yet made a compromise with my dad when I was born that could be my first name. They agreed I would go by my middle name, which as everyone knows is Michelle. For years when people ask me my middle name and I say Michelle they laugh and tell me to stop joking. Only I’m not joking. I even have friends who are so used to me being Michelle they often times forget my first name is Christina.

I’m what I have dubbed people over the years as middle namers. I’m a middle namer because my mom hated the typically shortened version of Christina, which is Christy. She never thought about people calling me Chris though. I don’t know if she would have necessarily enjoyed that either. Maybe that is because I somehow got stuck with the nickname Mitchell in middle school and she didn’t quite understand that one either. The stranger part is I got called Michael by various students passing back papers my whole life too.

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