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50 Years Of Being Stacey with An “E”
Musings, misspellings, and accepting that I’ll be correcting people forever.
Upon my birth in 1970, I was bestowed the statistically least popular of the Tracy/ Stacy variants: Stacey.
My name is not Stacy or Stacie or Stace. It is not not Tracy, Tracey or Tracie. Also, it is not Stephanie, but that should be far more obvious. Somehow, though, I’ve been called that numerous times.
My childhood coincided with a societal obsession for mall shopping. Highly featured within mall stores were countless, mostly useless items emblazoned with names. They were on clothing, bags, stickers, tiny bike license plates, pencils, Mickey Mouse ears, drink ware, posters and jewelry. I felt bad for friends and family who could not locate their less common names on these retail racks, but I was absolutely distraught when time and time again, I would find my name, spelled wrong.
I needed these items badly. I was a fifth grader at a twelfth grade reading level, who was acutely aware of the world. I followed the Iran hostage crisis. I was a member of the Cousteau Society. I read National Geographic for its intended purpose. I knew who Yasser Arafat was. I sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” wildly off key into a microphone on my tape recorder and confidently played it for…
