[113/366] illustration

[cosmolinguist]

The TV thing ended up being on today, not yesterday. I ended up being one of a few talking heads -- I'm so sad that one of them wasn't Terri from the RNIB, which it would normally have been but she just got furloughed; she's great at this kind of stuff.

As I suspected I was mostly there to walk with my cane and look weird in the shop. The cameraman was super excited about how I looked when I was looking at the shelves and I figured it was probably not how most people look while they're doing it. But then he also praised me for being a natural when I walked; he said a lot of people suddenly become unable to walk like a human as soon as they start being filmed.




P.S. Oh man I nearly forgot the best bit. Andrew's dad called to tel us he'd seen it on the news, and when Andrew got off the phone I asked what his dad had thought of it. Andrew said "His only comment was that he was surprised they didn't call you Holly Hickey."

Apparently he does know that I never changed my name, but he said he thought they'd have called her that anyway.

I'd gone to bed with a migraine by this point so I asked Andrew if that was why this didn't make any sense to me. They didn't ask about my last name at all (so, inevitably, pronounced it wrong in the piece) but they got it, like my first name, from the RNIB contacts. My brain hurt just trying to imagine the mechanism by which they could possibly have discovered that my husband has a different last name, much less used it instead.

This sparked a nice conversation between me and po8crg (who called me after he watched it on TV because seeing and hearing me made him miss me, bless him) about this idea some people have that everyone has a Real Immutable Name, and they might ask you to call them a nickname or something else but the Proper Official Name is still Out There somehow, being objectively the most correct. And I guess my father-in-law (who once nearly accidentally prevented me from going on a family holiday to Greece by booking all the plane tickets with the Hickey surname) has decided what he thinks mine is!

Comments

[worlds_of_smoke]

that haircut looks SO GOOD on you! <3 <3

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you! I kinda miss having a bit more hair on the top of my head but I'm pretty content with looking like this until I can have real haircuts again.

[norfolkian]

Yep, most of my in-laws have decided my name is Charlene [husband's surname] despite the fact that I never changed my name. We get cards to Mr & Mrs [husband's surname] at Christmas (and I'm not even a Mrs; I prefer Ms) and in one case I even got a cheque that I wasn't able to cash in because they used my husband's surname.

[alithea]

Yep, same here. Not his parents but the rest of their family, even the ones who were invited to the wedding where I specifically noted on the invitations that I wasn't changing my name to try and avoid the card and cheque addressing issue. And yes, we still had a cheque we couldn't cash and the replacement still required us to open a joint account before we could pay it in (I mean, we'd been planning to that anyway, but still).

[cosmolinguist]

We asked for no gifts at our wedding, them being impractical since we were leaving the country days later (we got married in the U.S.). And thus we had so many checks addressed to the wrong version of my name! Luckily (...I guess...) I grew up in an extremely rural part of the world and my marrying someone from another country made me locally famous as this was completely bizarre and unheard of, and the like three ladies who work in the bank who've known my family forever were quite happy to put the checks into my bank account even with the wrong name on them.

It was probably naughty of them to do that, but it saved me a lot of grief! (Because, y'know, leaving the country in a couple days...! I wouldn't have had a chance to sort them out. And we were skint as a skint thing so really needed the money!)

[alithea]

A marriage certificate apparently used to be sufficient to get the bank to accept the different name but the one we were trying to use had stopped accepting that. I dunno if it's a UK wide rule or just something that some companies have made policy. Good thing you managed to get round it, that would have been so frustrating otherwise!

[otter]

There are some good things about small towns.

[cosmolinguist]

most of my in-laws have decided...

I can almost understand it from my in-laws (well the rest of them are fine -- sister-in-law was the one who noticed that holiday-booking name problem! -- it's just Andrew's dad really). But my! own! family! my mom and grandma mailed us things for an entire year addressed to Andrew and Holly Hickey and I couldn't believe my parents were so keen for me to give up their name. :)

I'm not even a Mrs; I prefer Ms

Me too (until I started preferring Mx. anyway). "Mrs. Mylastname" honestly had me looking around for my mom when I first heard it, and she was 4000 miles away at the time! But that's definitely her name and not mine.

[alithea]

Glad it went well :) Your hair does indeed look good and you always leave it on top for longer than the sides next time to buzz it if you're missing the extra hair - if that isn't too awkward to work out (I dunno whether Andrew is any help for that sort of thing).

[cosmolinguist]

He's dyspraxic and hates getting haircuts himself so wouldn't dream of helping with mine. Which is why I went with shaving it all over; it's the only thing I can manage on my own. And it's good, I'm glad people like it!

[alithea]

Ah, yes, definitely safest to stick with one length all over then! You can definitely carry it off 😄

[ludy]

Thank you for doing this televisual activism.

Occasionally people on the phone will ask for "Mr or Mrs [Family Name]" and will be very confused when i automatically (and autistically) answer "Sorry, my Parents don't live here"

[alithea]

Kev always knows when phone calls are spam because they address him as Mr my surname when he picks up because I've lived here since before we got together so all the bills etc were originally just in my name (either that or they assume he's Dr my surname because male)

[cosmolinguist]

Ha, I'd have the same thought! Mr or Mrs definitely sounds like my parents. :)

[finding_helena]

I did change my name, but it was still a problem that my FIL booked all our honeymoon tickets with my new name, as it was not legally changed yet ONE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING.

But I don't like being Mrs. I earned that doctorate, doggone it. It's Dr. Elaine and Mr. Alec, kthx.

Anymore most phone reps seem to think that Mrs. is a dirty word and address me as Miss (last name). Bleck.

[cosmolinguist]

People do seem to think it changes automatically! They were surprised when one of the reasons I didn't change my name was this emigrating immediately afterwards business: wanting the names on my passport and plane tickets and marriage certificate I'd need for important stuff once I got to the UK all be the same seemed like a higher priority. The idea that this would take paperwork and time and bureaucracy that would have an extra layer of difficulty if it needed to happen in two countries and I could only be in one didn't seem to have occurred to people.

I think Miss is about the only thing worse than Mrs! Urgh. Whenever I hear "Miss" I think of the French getting rid of Mademoiselle entirely. That can be done! We just don't need it.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not so terribly opposed to Miss EXISTING. It's just not the right title for me at all under any set of standards, and it bothers me that phone reps aren't taught to either default to Ms. or to check the title the person specified.

Though I think a lot of people still don't know what Ms. means, and most haven't gotten as far as to understand Mx. if they don't know someone who uses the title, and therefore people just use Miss for all females, probably because they've had their head bitten off by someone for using Mrs. because it makes them "sound old".

I'd rather be called Mrs. than Miss if I had to pick. But I prefer Dr. or Ms. or even just my first name! Miss (last name) is not me, it's my 8 year old daughter.

[finding_helena]

Sorry, that was me. Didn't realize I wasn't logged in.

[silveradept]

Mm. There's the further issue of what's my legal name versus what's the name I actually use here and there, but I also understand this idea, yes, that there's some sort of of Real Name you have, regardless of start your name is, and that you don't get to determine what it is.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I'm finding it very strange to be addressed as Holly all the time by anyone these days, but then I have to remind myself it's only my friends who might think I'm called Cosmo. :)

[sfred]

People, eh?!

[otter]

I like the photos of you!

My ex and I chose a family name that neither of us grew up with, because we liked the relatives who share that name. Some people are surprised that I didn't change my last name with the divorce, but others (and maybe some of the same) have trouble with the fact that I changed my first name. (not legally yet)

When I get calls for Mr and/or Mrs {last name}, I tell them that there is neither of such at this number. Technically, I suppose my adult kids could be Mr, but they just live here, they're not head of household in any way.

[cosmolinguist]

It's funny how some name changes are seen as compulsory, like a last name on change of marital status, and some are weird to those same people, like changing a first name.

[jesse_the_k]

I love your expression in the second photo: you look like you've just experienced The Best Thing with your Mona Lisa smile.

Since MyGuy was the single working person in the household for many decades, we've attended (and dodged) many work parties. The invitations inevitably were addressed to Jesse and MyGuy [His Last Name].

First time it happened, he complained. The person sending invites said, "Why do you have different names?" He replied quick as a fox -- we have different parents! It's an effective comeback.

[cosmolinguist]

"We have different parents" is great. :)

I am only smiling like that because it was such fun doing the filming. The cameraman was friendly and the shop at the end of my road were delighted and impressed that we were there.