What's in a name?

When I was born, my parents could only agree on one thing. This one thingwas to give me the name Samantha. Of all the names they could agree on, I wonder why this was the one. I really don't like this name, but as I get older I am starting to appreciate it more and more.

When I was in Reception (and for those who don't know, that's what they call 'Prep' in South Australia), my teachers stumbled upon a problem. I was not the only Samantha in the class. There was indeed, another Samantha. Now this could easily be fixed by just calling me Samantha S, right? Wrong! Because we both had surnames starting with S!

So when we entered into grade one, the first day, the classroom teacher fixed the problem. After a quick discussion, I was renamed Sammy, and the other Samantha just became Sam.

Sammy comes with a lot of little cliche's added at the end. Sammy the snail, the sea gull, sea slug, sea snail.. you get the picture. Many of which I got throughout my life at school.

My last name is Smedley. Smedley, in old english, means "smooth clearing". In about year six I made my own name for myself, which was Smedles [Smed-ools]. I tried to be Smeds but soon my sister got that title, and it sticked to her better than it did me. I remember kids turning Smedles into snails. And in my early high school days getting the names Sammy Smelly and Sammy Shmell-bad. And I was up for these terrible last names, because when you wrote Smedley into Microsoft Word, and you would click spell check, it would say Smedley: Did you mean Smelly?

Later into VCE, I was called either Shammy my car (I found that one amusing), C-mos (a very long story - and for those who don't know, it's a clock battery in your computer), Sammy Airways, and also, by my IT teacher, I was dubbed Sammy-badger-badger.

Time went on, and I didn't really get many more names. But then suddenly, about a year ago (although it seems so much longer!) I met this girl, who appears has has also been given a few different names. In fact, she quite commonly goes by the name of a cooking instrument.

It all started one night talking nonsense about various food, and it has grown into something greater.

You see, this friend of mine, she really likes brussels sprouts. So one day, after school, I went down to the local fruit and veg place, and brought her a bag of brussel sprouts.

On this bag, I wrote "You will always be my brussels sprout, no matter where you are, even when you're out of season!"

And so there started the new thing. She turned into Sprout, and somehow I was dubbed the name, "Broccoli".

A few weeks later I went to do a bit of stuff for kids4life at a school. I didn't know one of the guys were there, but some how he thought my name was "Flick". It started a new thing. My friend that DID know me began to call me Flick too! Luckily it hasn't stuck too much.

But going back to this Sprout friend of mine, last night we were getting into a very bizarre in depth conversation. I don't even know how it started. But basically, my new name now is Grandma.

But then my question is this: how can I be Sprout's grandma, when I am 2 years younger than her? We were trying to mathematically work this out last night, and I guess what I want to ask, dear blogger, is it possible, to have a grandmother who is 2 years younger than you? I'm interested to hear your responses!

I just wonder what my next name will be!