I… am not amused.
Those who know me well know that my middle name is a bit unusual. It’s very similar to a much more common name, but is missing one letter. All my life I’ve been having to deal with people misspelling and/or mispronouncing my name. It was old back in grade school. Hell, when I was in high school, it literally took me three and a half years to get the school district to correctly spell my name on my transcript. I’d gripe and complain, but nothing was done for the longest time. Fortunately they fixed it before I graduated…
Speaking of which, at my graduation, I was ready to take the stage to receive my diploma. I stood there, next in line… and Mr. Schwetmann mispronounced my middle name. If you had looked closely you could have seen me muttering under my breath as I walked across the stage to get my diploma. Meanwhile, down in the orchestra, one of the flutists looked at the program and said, “Hey, they misspelled Scott’s name in the program!”
Malinda, my girlfriend at the time, replied through gritted teeth, “They didn’t misspell it. He mispronounced it.”
What brings this up, you may wonder? Well, last week I ordered new checks from my bank. I didn’t specify the name to be put on them, as it really didn’t matter. Well, they arrived today. I took them and opened the box… to find that they included my middle name on the checks, and had the misspelled version. *sigh*
I’m going to go in to the bank first thing in the morning and gripe. This time, maybe they’ll do it right and just put my middle initial instead of putting the full name. It’ll be less headache for everyone involved, methinks. I just wish that for once someone would get it right on the first try…