What's your name?

I have no idea why, but my parents gave me a name that they've never used. I don't think the parents have anything against Julia, but for one reason or another they've always called me Julie. In elementary school I asked my teachers to call me Julie. By the time I got to junior high, and had seven teachers to set straight I became sort of sporadic about it. Some of them I asked to call me Julie, and some of them I did not, High school was the same story. So of course it got to be a little confusing for people who had one class with me where I was Julie, and another class where I was Julia. It's just enough of a difference to make them unsure of what's going on, second guess themselves, and hesitate to call me by either.

In college I developed more of a system to things. At work I am always Julia, at home and with friends I am Julie. Church has historically been a bit more problematic. Although my name is Julia on all church records, up until a few years ago I've always been in the same ward as one or both of my sisters, who call me Julie. Even since the sisters have gone off and gotten married, there are still people in the area who are firmly entrenched in the belief that my name is Julie. It's to the point that some busy body told the ward records person that the ward records are all wrong, and that I'm Julie, not Julia...I'm glad I don't know who it was, I don't want to be tempted to think less of them. I decided it wasn't worth the effort to look into getting it corrected. Now on church materials I'm Julie on some and Julia on others.

To make it all the more confusing, the last few years I've become less dilligent about sticking to Julie in my personal life. It's become something of a crapshoot which name I'll use when introducing myself. The result has been that I've noticed that lately I've acquired quite a few nicknames. There's always the flattering ones "Beautiful" (my personal favorite, I even had a member of the bishopric use that one), "Sunshine" (and I swear that they're being sincere), a few people who know about the board still occasionally call me "BDB," (which I'm very fond of, since it actually sort of feels like my name in a weird kind of way), "July," and of course "Jules," and there used to be a guy out here that called me "Toots." But with increasing frequency I'm hearing a lot more of "Sister." When guys in your singles ward have started calling you "Sister" that could be a sign to pick a name and stick with it. Now I just need to decide which one...