The Gap Stole My Name!

When I was little, I rather hated my name. And because my mother kept my hair short, people didn't know if I was a boy or a girl, and my name, well, it didn't give them any further clues. I could never find never barrettes, notepads or other fun personalized trinkets with my name on them. At some point, around high school, I started to appreciate the uniqueness of my name. But now, many years later, my name seems poised not to be so unique any more. And the fact that The Gap has turned my own personal brand into a cut for jeans doesn't make me as happy as it might have when I was, say, seventeen. What's worse, they are made for some other fictional Hadley, one with no curves and that's definitely not me.

The truth is, I've kind of liked being (more or less) the only one all these years. While there is a website, a registry for all the Hadleys in recent history, in all of my years I've never met another one, and neither have most the people I meet. Once, years ago, a friend of a friend I wasn't so sure about asked me if she could name her daughter Hadley. I told her I'd rather she didn't. Was that mean? Am I selfish? Perhaps. But now it seems there may not much chance of stemming the tide of Hadleys to come, so I might as well just face that I've been paving the way for a new generation of "Hadleys" everywhere.