January 4, 1999

Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to go out and kill the woman myself. My feelings towards her are not strong enough to provoke me to stalking her with an assault weapon. I just think that if she were to gracefully keel over dead, or even just stop recording music and being on the radio every 30 seconds my life would be so much better.

Why? Well, first off, I don't like her music. Granted, there are all kinds of music taste, and generally I think that whatever anyone wants to listen to is their own business. I mean, I've got some pretty warped music taste myself. My favorite band is Metallica, but I also like lots of other groups like Harvey Danger and Aqua, that people tease me for liking. I don't really care. No, I don't think Celine Dion must die because I think her music sucks (although I do). The reason that she must die is because of her name.

I grew up with the name Celine McLean and got teased mercilessly for it. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've heard, "Hey, your name rhymes." Of course, that was said by more mature observers. Most kids I grew up with would just make up little poem to tease me, and because my name already rhymed it just helped. I was traumatized. Once, in junior high, I went up to introduce myself to a new girl in school. I politely asked her her name and she said "Melinda. What's yours?" I replied, "Celine." She then asked me what my last name was and I replied, "McLean" with resignation. She just looked at me and said "You're kidding, right?" I just sighed.

Okay, but not to sound like I'm asking for pity here, 'cause if I were, I'd regale you with even more gory details about how I was teased. Let's just leave it at that. I was teased and I didn't like it. However, when I got to high school and college, I got over it and thought my name was cool. People remembered it. People liked it, but most of all, I liked it. I though that having an uncommon name was worth having to spell it every time I tried to give it to someone, besides it was an uncommon name that was pretty. I even came to terms with my last name and decided that if I ever got married, I would keep my name, I liked the way they went together so much. So life went on.

Then one day, I was working as a reservations agent at a rental car company which meant I had to say my name to every person who called in on my line. "Aloha and thank you for calling Budget Rent A Car, this is Celine, how may I help you?" It happened to be a travel agent on the other end who said, "Celine, you mean like Celine Dion?" At the time I didn't know who she was so I said, "I guess" which led to him calling me Celine Dion every time he called in and spoke to me. Of course, having found out that somebody famous had the same name as me, I was excited and found out who she was. I was so disappointed. I think I disliked her music from the first moment I heard it. "Oh well, I thought, maybe people won't notice the name thing."

WRONG! It started off slowly and gradually became more and more common. Today, I can barely tell people my name without someone making a comment. "Yes, just like Celine Dion, no, I've never heard that before." Sheesh. If one more person, upon hearing my name, smirks and says, "Oh, like Celine Dion?" I think I'm going to scream at them. I mean, I don't go around saying things like "Joe? Like Joe Namath? or Mighty Joe Young?" or whatever. The best is when people say, "Oh, do you sing too?" Like the name Celine automatically confers singing talent. The answer is NO, I can't sing. I can't carry a tune in a bucket, and in fact I think people would pay me NOT to sing if they could. "Oh, your name is Stephen? Like Stephen Hawking? Did you write a book about black holes and the space/time continuum?" Sounds absurd, doesn't it?

So to end this rant, YES, my name is Celine just like Celine Dion, and YES, I spell it the same way, and NO, I don't sing. And you know, I happen to have had the name Celine myself a lot longer than the general public even knew who Celine Dion was. And, at least it's better than when McDonalds used to have that "healthy" sandwich, the McLean Deluxe and people would hear my last name and say, "Oh, like the hamburger?"


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