middle names

i don't have one. my parents decided not to 'burden' my sisters and i with middle names, because we had hyphenated last names. their logic, to me, seems totally weird, because middle names are basically your optional 2nd identity names; you rarely have to use them for legal purposes, but i always have to leave the last 4 or 5 letters off my last name. at my last three jobs i've defaulted to using only one of my last names, twice because the IT people decided what my email address, and therefore professional last name, should be without asking me. the other time, IT used my WHOLE name for my email address, including the hyphen, and i didn't want to deal with saying 22 letters and symbols every time i gave my email out to a hotel or coworker so i asked them to leave it at 'healy'. which is still spelled wrong 7 out of every 10 times i give it out. so, thanks, parents, that whole 'two last names instead of a middle name' made a whole lot of sense.

i am getting distracted though. basically, i always wished i had either a cool name or an even cooler middle name. growing up, my best friend's name was audra. aka, the coolest name ever. in second grade, i wanted my middle name to be ariel (sigh). i even told a subsitute teacher that was my middle name (i had issues). recently, i have toyed with the idea of just giving myself a middle name, and going by that instead. i feel sort of weird about that, probably stemming from memories of trying to give myself the nickname... ugh... crane in 3rd or 4th grade. attention, parents: when your imaginative child has no friends and plays pretend with magic horses and tries to name herself crane... um, get her some friends. or make her go to summer camp. and NOT theatre summer camp, that doesn't count. sheesh. anyway, here is a list of names i've been considering, and you can all see for yourselves the profound lack of maturing and progress i have made since 4th grade.

DON'T STEAL THESE:
emerson
adelaide
aurora
reid (or reade)
harper
artemis
thursday

my mom has recently expressed regret for not giving my sisters and i middle names. i feel bad about that. i mean her middle name is 'anne', no wonder she thought no one wanted middle names. my dad has no excuse though, he GOES by his middle name for business.