Lamb Like the Animal

To answer to the sound of an animal is something I, Kristin Lamb, have grown accustomed to. In the game of names, I’ve always felt I have been fighting a losing battle. Even worse, I, Kristin Anne Lamb, have a middle name that slightly rhymes with my image-evoking last name.
While in the sixth grade I begged my mother for a name change for the first time. Unfortunately for me, “Lamb-chop’s Sing-A-Long” was all the rage, and kids weren’t afraid to belt out each word of the mind-numbingly catchy theme song. Every time the recess bell would ring, I was serenaded by a chorus-line of fellow classmates each grinning and waiting for my eyes to puff and lips to quiver. I wasn’t known as Kristin, I was known as Kristin Lamb, the girl with the funny last name.
A year passed, and the tears dried from the school-wide sing-a-longs. Swope Middle School mandated all seventh-graders take violin classes to “broaden the horizons” of its students. I won’t lie; I was excited to broaden them until my eyes fell on the sheet music of our first song. “Mary Had a Little Lamb?!?” I shrieked, “You have got to be kidding me!” I felt the eyes of my classmates all shoot towards me in unison, anxiously waiting for my freckled face to burst into red. Most of these classmates had gone to elementary school with me, and knew exactly what to expect. I wanted to stand my ground, I wanted to refuse to pluck those strings in that exact rhythm, and take an F in music. I thought about claiming it was against my religion, maybe it was against everything I stood for, anything but playing that stupid song in public. This was my second failed attempt to legally changing my name from Kristin Lamb to Ashley Jones or Rebecca Smith.
Despite my childhood pleas, however, I would never change my name. Being the youngest daughter of my late father, I am single handedly keeping my family name alive. You see, my father was an only child, and my two older sisters have both remarried and abandoned the last name, leaving me the burden to carry it on. I have concluded that I will keep my name, even through marriage, to honor my dad and guarantee that my children are doomed with the same torturous childhood mocking I endured through my elementary days. Maybe it built character, maybe I secretly liked the attention of such a funny name, either way I would not change it for the world.
Through all of my research, I could find only one person of celebrity with the same name as mine, his name was Charles Lamb. He was an English essayist, who wrote Essays of Elia and the children’s book, Tales from Shakespeare. I suppose it is hard to convey an important idea or groundbreaking knowledge with such a “cute” name, so it almost makes sense that he wrote a children’s book with his sister, Mary Lamb. Also, during my extensive look for more information about my last name, I stumbled across a coat of arms. It has a classic look to it, with a lance on top. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about this coat of arms or the meaning behind it, but I didn’t even know it existed before my research.
My first name stemmed from what seems to be the antithesis of what you think a lamb represents. My mother originally wanted to name me Jessica, but, while in the hospital, she was watching a riveting episode of Days of Our Lives. Perhaps she was under a drug-induced haze, or perhaps she was deliriously afraid of childbirth, but while watching this daytime smut she stumbled upon a character named Kristen. She was evil, trying to break up a marriage between two of the main characters, and was trying steal the baby of another. All in all, Kristen was not someone I would want to be named after. Unfortunately for me, I was in the womb, unable to speak my mind or give an opinion on this matter that definitely affected me a lot more than my mother. So, Kristin I became, and not even the accepted “-en” version; no, my mother had to mix up the spelling so I would forever be doomed to spell it out or just accept however it looked on paper. She did this with my older sisters too, Brandi and Jenni.
Looking back, one should expect to be ridiculed at a young age for such a name, but even as an adult, I still get the “Lamb, like the animal?” response or “Aww that’s cute” occasionally. I am determined to make the name Lamb a force to be reckoned with! I am on a mission to change one’s mind and initial reaction to the name Lamb from fluffy baby sheep to words like power, strength, and intimidation.