Story of the Day 10/29/2008

My husband was having an identity crisis.
Of course, it could have been worse, it could have been his own identity crisis; instead he was having it for our daughter.
My husband wanted to know what our daughter's name is.
Not Esther.
Esther's name has been an issue for years. When she was about a year old, we visited our cousins in Columbus, Ohio.
Their older son, Luke, embarrassed them terribly. He asked, "When she is older, are you going to let her change her name to something better?" (Of course, we thought it was funny, which, somehow, didn't lessen their mortification.)
I answered, "Yes, she will probably change it to something that she likes.
Over the years, we were sometimes asked, "Well, what is she going to do when she gets married?'
Since we live in a town with several other Jewish kids with hyphenated last names, this would sometimes be some conjecture. "She could marry…and the last name could be Margolis-Greenbaum- Vonnegut-Gabovitch" Or "He (Aaron, since the family only had girls) could marry ….and the last name could be " Berday-Sachs-Margolis-Greenbaum."
To these types of inquiries, I would answer, "Well, they will have to decide for themselves."
I never really envisioned what did happen.
Esther, in middle school, started thinking about changing her last name.
"Shampoo".
Shampoo? No, she wasn't into hair products, but it was the last name of the guy who sold us her guinea pig, and she was entranced.
Eventually, she kind of settled into only using Margolis, or, on occasion, Greenbaum; so it has over the years, prudent to ask her, "What last name are you using?"But, no, my husband was inquiring about Sarah. Sarah who also has had a string of names, Lisa, Jones, Jazzy, Lois, and some that she would cringe if I publicized, but which we endearingly use to refer to her. But, since she has basically just been Sarah for a few years…I wasn't quite sure what he meant.

Turns out, he needed to know what her name was on her health insurance card.
Like most computer systems, the doctor's office couldn’t' cope with the length and breadth of her full last name, and had abbreviated it, but they also needed it to match her insurance card. Was she Sarah Margolis-Greenb? Margolis-Greenba, or just Margolis- Gree? She has had the opportunity to be each of these people, due to the inadequacies of different computers and forms.
And, all in all, this isn’t bad. My poor husband has had a slew of interesting misspellings sent to him in the mail- our favorites being Greenbaer, Greenbalm, and Greenbomb.But, this is going to be a problem. According to her insurance card she is "Margolis-Greenbaum", so, they will have to somehow coax the office computer into spitting out all of those extra letters. At least, if they want to use the same identity the insurance company has given her.