Why couldn’t they have just called me something normal?
That was the internal whine that played out in my huffy little head on an daily basis as I was growing up.
Top of the list of acceptable alternatives were Danny and Steve. Proper names. I’d also have been happy with Howie (Colt Seavers’s sidekick in The Fall Guy) and Luke (Skywalker as a middle name would have been an added bonus, but not a deal-breaker).
I remember pleading with my parents to have my name legally changed, but to no avail. For some reason they thought Chae was a fine, interesting name that I would grow to like.
Eh? What the heck did they know, stupid grown-ups?
They might as well have called me Pancake-Trumpet III or Bongo Cheesepipe or Wee Jiggle Pomfrey. Why didn’t they understand?
But they did understand. My dad, Pumperdink, and my mum, Bananalama, were only too aware that you grow into your name (I may have altered their real names to protect their identities).
And they were right, of course. As I went through my teenage years I stopped hating my name and, by the time I was an adult, I actually liked it.
Now I’m grateful to my parents for choosing a more interesting name (inspired by the character Chae Strachan in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Sunset Song).
Mind you, I still think Luke Skywalker Strathie sounds pretty darn cool. Perhaps if I ever have a son…
chaestrathie 