it all began in the fifth grade, with an obligatory st. valentine’s day card — undoubtedly bearing the countenance of some cartoon character — from melissa weinstein:

i could have forgiven that transgression, and the thousand that followed it, had it not become so ridiculously common.

i admit that my name is not common — either first or last. ‘downard’ i would be slightly more inclined to forgive misspellings/mispronunciation of if only people wouldn’t always misspell/mispronounce it the exact same way. yes, i know that there is a word in the english language that bears striking resemblance to my surname; however, that word is not my surname no matter how much you would like it to be.

and that’s just half of the problem.

little known fact: i will answer to samantha and stephanie in addition to sabrina. why? simple: it’s easier than fighting back. for some reason, the name sabrina slips out of people’s heads like sand through a sieve, and it is most frequently replaced by those two runners-up. i gave up correcting people long since.

(you’d think that, with two major motion pictures and a television series sharing my name, the name might stick in your head. you would be wrong, sadly.)

when i was younger, i used to promise myself that as soon as i turned eighteen, i was going to change my name to something people wouldn’t screw up all the time. of course by the time i turned eighteen, i was too stubborn — if you can’t figure out my name that’s your problem, not mine.

and sometimes it even works out to my advantage: