Marla: Names

When I was a child I didn't like my name. It wasn't magical enough, it didn't sound beautiful when spoken aloud. My name was too connected to my life, a life that at the time, I wasn't very fond of. My parents divored when I was three and I lived 95% of the time with my mother in a sneeze and you miss it northern California town. One time when I was about seven, I was flying back from visiting my father on his farm in Pennsylvania. I was used to flying as an unattended minor. I was an expert. But this time, as chance would have it, my father put me on an earlier flight then agreed upon. While in the air during that foggy neither here nor there time a stewardess asked me for my name. Without missing a beat, I replied: Julie. When the plane landed, no one was there to pick up Julie. No one was there looking for Marla because of the flight mix up. And thus, Julie found herself in a suburban foster home with TV, and white bread, and everything that Marla wanted but didn't have. It took almost a week for my mother to track me down and convince everyone that she was a capable parent. When she came to get me pick me up, Marla was nonplused and Julie wanted to stay.