When You See Her Say A Prayer & Kiss Your Heart Goodbye, She's Trouble, In A Word Get Closer To The Fire, Run Faster, Her Laughter Burns You Up Inside

--"Who's That Girl?", Madonna

According to babynamespedia, Breanne, as a name has never been more than the 470th popular girl's name in the United States in any one given year. Most folks would find it a real disappointment to discover that one's name isn't high on the list of names chosen for their precious little darlings year after year. But not me. I take it as a real compliment having a name that feels like I have it all to myself. I don't even fret in the slightest that it's only ever cracked the top 500 in the country. Hell's bells, that little 'ole fact suits me just fine considering I've only barely cracked the top 25 in any one given pageant. It's far important to me that I possess a name that singularly captures who and what I am.

Breanne. Celtic in origin, meaning strength, power, force. And let me just tell you, I am quite the force to be reckoned with most days.

I take the fact that there aren't a whole helluva lot of Breannes out there as a badge of pride. It's silly, but I become as protective as a sow with all its piglets in a row behind her when somebody else mentions they know or have met another of my sorority. It then becomes a contest of ascertaining that I, in fact, am the best young woman ever to don the name Breanne. Whether it be the fact I'm the most intelligent, most beautiful, most wealthy, most anything--I breathe a sigh of relief as soon as I can tell myself that there ain't no better "me" out there. If anything, it would be mighty nice were everyone else to stop naming their children Breanne, all things considered--that's how much I prize being the only one of my kind.

All of that makes the following anecdote harder to bear. The other week I was talking to Fanny's friend, Emily, whom we had both met in college. Emily mentioned that we had a mutual friend from my days at Coben's who was interested in getting in touch with me. Normally, that would be a hoot-and-a-half because I absolutely adore catching up with old acquaintances, but my time at Coben's wasn't exactly the most pleasant of experiences and the folks I met there weren't exactly the keeping in touch with kind. I asked who this mysterious admirer was. Emily said her name was Kim--Kim D., to be precise. That's when my dimples must have flashed with bemusement.

Kim and I had both been fast friends and co-workers. She was one of the only people I liked when I spent those two summers there All in all, she might have been the one and only person I considered worth coming to work to catch up with. But, like anything, without the daily interaction of conversing with those in our life we really don't have anything in common with and only ever see in passing during our workday, relations become tenuous after a short period of time. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I did not expect to ever speak to or I daresay contemplate again the personage of one Kim D. It isn't like the case with what happened with Fawn and I. Fawn and I had been friends for a good number of years before we were separated and it was always in the back of my mind how splendid it would be to find the dear 'ole darling. Kim was just someone I thought would serve as an amusing footnote to that period of my life, with no new information to be gleaned from it.

I immediately told Emily to put me in touch with Kim as soon as was to her convenience.

It wasn't until last Thursday that my answer paid off in actual dividends.

Kim called me on that day all hearts and giggles and flowers. She said, "Bree, it's been ages." She asked how I was doing. She said all the things that made me feel like she truthfully missed me. Her voice crackled with the enthusiasm of a lovelorn hunting hound finally being reunited with her master, so pained were her pangs of heartache. It turns out she wanted to invite me to her daughter's baptism. She even added how "it'd be a real treat" if I could make it. It frankly took me by surprise how abundant her emotions were in regards to me. So much so that when she offered to "come for a visit so she could drop off the invitations personally," my only answer was, "That'd be a pleasant surprise, sugar." We made plans for her to drop by the house when Greg was home this past Saturday. I simply do not know how to turn down that kind of fire when it's being directed towards me, you know?

All that changed as soon as I answered the door to let her in. The first words out of her mouth threw me off my sense of nostalgia as sure as Greg Maddux throwing off any pitcher's mound in the world.

"Oh, you're that Bree. When Emily told me she knew a Bree that knew me, I thought of somebody else I used to know, child," she laughed.

I didn't know what to do. It turns out she really didn't know another Breanne, but Emily's predilection for the shortening of my God-given name had set in motion a chain of events that had culminated in the ultimately humiliating scene I had at my doorstep. My cheeks blushed profusely, from dimples to where my ears started. It was painful enough to have been mistaken for another of her acquaintances, but that quickly turned into the uncomfortable sense of dread when I saw the engraved invitation she had in her hand. Knowing it wasn't meant for me, it was very awkward to have one wanted to go and now sensing I would no longer be invited.

Yet through it all, I constantly came back to the notion of outrage at being mistaken for another "Bree". Bree is bad enough, but the fact she could confuse my name with another's when obviously my name is the most precious and special name in all of God's creation was like pouring vinegar onto an open cut. It was like taking away a child's ice cream and then eating in front of her. That's how excruciating that was. I started to wonder if i had made an impression at all on Kim.

In the end, it turned out alright. I was still invited for the baptism next month, me and my husband. In the end, it turns out she was glad she had been put in touch with me because it had really been a long time between seeing each other. In the end she too remembered the great fun we had had when we had been working together. I forgave her for expecting another woman when she showed up at my door because that was the Christian thing to do.

But I shall never in all my life bestow my forgiveness or my mercy on her for mistaking my precious jewel of name with that of another woman. That's a cross she shall have to bear for eternity, I reckon. haha

Breanne