What's In a Name?

I am currently in Los Angeles visitng with some old friends from USC. It is a little surreal being back here after three years, especially considering I haven't seen some of these people since we graduated back in 2005.

One such person is my friend, Heather, who was my roommate freshman year of college. But here is the really odd thing: since we have last seen each other, she has decided she no longer wants to go by "Heather" and instead refers to herself as Demetria, a play on her maiden name (she got married our senior year).

WTF right? Please tell me others find this as bizarre as I do. Another friend and I were talking about it and agree that you can't just up and change your name, much in the same way you can't just go and give yourself a nickname rather than earn one in a more organic and natural manner. If people ask, I tell them I go by Jess a lot, but I find it bizarre to even introduce myself as anything but Jessica because Jessica is my given name and Jess is something people who have gotten to know me call me.

They also call me Fetch. Sad, right? Poker is a world of nicknames--everyone has some alternative identity. For the online players, their screename serves as their nickname (we'll return to this in a future post) and, for many live pros, their nickname indicates the nature of the way they play like John "The Razor" Phan or, more hilariously, Allen "The Chainsaw" Kessler.

How did "Fetch" come about you may wonder? Court Harrington, that's how. Well, Court and the fact that I tend to just do what I am told without much of a fight. "Walk from the convention center to the Masquerade Tower? Sure" "Go take this to Joe Sebok" "OK!" Obviously, you can just stand to reason how he took to calling me Fetch.

Perhaps my favorite Fetch story is when I received a text message from Court that read: "Fetch-there is a bottle of tylenol in my backpack. Take that and $100 to Jeremiah please."

A few things to clarify:
1) Jeremiah is Jeremiah Smith, a former poker media person turned frequent tournament chip leader. Every event Jeremiah plays he manages to be the chip leader in, unfortunately just not at the very end of play when it matters the most.

2) The $100 is not in Court's backpack. It is assummed Fetch will take $100 of her own money and pass it along to Miah so he can get more masseuse time.

3) Jeremiah is not a P5er, we are not covering him for P5s Live, and therefore it is in no way expected of me to perform this task as part of my job.

Yet, I find myself not even questioning it as I wander into the media room, grab the Tylenol, get $100 out of my wallet, and trapse back out to the Amazon Room to Jeremiah's table.

After the task was complete, I simply texted Court back: "Fetch to the rescue."