One day out of the clear blue sky, my mom informed me that if I were born a girl, I would have been named Susan.   Susan Mackie?  What a lame name.  Michael Mackie, meanwhile, has a certain ring to it and it rolls right off the tongue.  Awesome alliteration.  I used to think I wanted to study weather because Meteorologist Michael Mackie sounded righteous.  And then I realized I had to learn insipid things like physics and math.

There are two people who get away with calling me “Mike”.  One is my Aunt Margaret and because I love her dearly, I have yet to correct her.  And the other is my favorite priest Father Bertogli, who insists on calling me Mike despite repeated attempts to change his tune.  What am I gonna do?  Punch him in the throat?  He’s a frickin’ priest, for Chrissake.

No, my name is not Mike.  It’s also not Mikey, Mickey or any variation thereof.  A few people still call me Mac, my name all through high school.  A few people call me MBOB, my nickname at my first TV station.  And there’s a smattering of people who currently refer to me as M-Squared because that’s how I sign all my e-mails and correspondence.

But call me Mike once … and that will be the last time you do it.

Once at a cocktail party, a woman kept called me Mike even though Michael was clearly imprinted on my nametag.   Every time she did it I would bark out “HULL” to ensure my name was not besmirched.  “So, Mike …”, she’d say.  “HULL!” I’d interrupt mid-thought.  “What?” she asked.  “I said Hull … my name.  Is Michael,” I said (half in the bag).   To which she responded, “Oh, I didn’t know that.  Your last name isn’t on the tag.  Nice to meet you Mr. Gull.”  Somehow she didn’t just manage to butcher my first name, she even got my fake last name wrong too.  So for the rest of the evening she would introduce me as Mike Gull.

Close enough.  I’ll take it.