Darrell, Darrell and my other brother, Darrell

I walked into the room and was introduced to everyone as the guest visitor. "Hello, so nice to meet you, my name is Darrell." "DARRELL?! Seriously? Your name is Darrell?"

There it is - there's that moment. The one where no one can possibly process a woman with this name. That moment where everyone thinks they heard "Carol." Or they ask me if my parents wanted a boy. Sometimes I care to entertain the crowd of disbelievers further by sharing the true fact that I was drafted into Vietnam by mistake. Other times I tell them how I was called down to the boys gym for physicals every year.  Also true. My favorite story is the man at the mall who yelled at me and told me it was sin to have his name. I asked him why, and he angrily told me because he was "a hard working farmer, god dammit," Ok. Sure...

Anyway… Tonight after I say my name a woman stands up and exclaims loudly, “OH MY GOODNESS, I have to tell my daughter how I finally met a woman named Darrell!!!! We have talked about this her entire life! I need to call her!! This is so unbelievable!”…

“Excuse me?”…My brain is now rebooting a lifetime of rehearsed replies.

“YES! Surely you were named after the Mallory Tower children book series from the 1950’s, right?!! I loved those books and the main character, you know, the young girl named Darrell!”…Now everything is in reverse and I am the one who can’t process my own name.

She continues, “She had all these wonderful adventures! I so wanted to name my daughter after her – but didn’t.” I am speechless. Not only have I never heard of these books but I am out of my element here. I have never met anyone who shares such glee and reverence for my name. I irrationally find myself thinking how relieved I am to learn that this character was known for being adventurous and wondering what other fantasy attributes I can latch onto for inspiration. My mind eventually returns to the now, “So, what did you end up naming your daughter?” “Mallory.” Oh, as in the tower that housed the awesome fiction Adventuress named Darrell.

A fiction adventuress named Darrell...I am inspired by storytelling and the gift of a name all over again.