NMN

24 April 2017

I believe I mentioned that my mom chose my name after she saw a movie, Yolanda and the Thief, when she was a young girl, but I can't remember if I told you she gave me no middle name! Her reasoning was that she'd picked such an unusual first name that, if I wanted to at some future point, adding a middle name would be a whole lot easier than changing my name.

Of course, I don't think she took into consideration what the Navy would do when they issued our ID cards.

In the military, at least when I was a kid, you could apply for your own ID card at the magic age of 10. I have no clue why they set the age at 10. I couldn't drive . . . well legally anyway. I had no real money to go shopping at the PX (that's the Post Exchange, sort of like a general store) or the commissary (grocery store). BUT, at 10 I could ride the base bus by myself, go to the movies, hit the pool . . . so there was that!

Me . . . at 10 . . . for my own ID

I got mine while we were in Spain . . . as luck would have it, my sister would have to wait until we got back to the States the following year to get hers!

I was so excited though . . . to get my own ID card. When I went to the PX or commissary with Mom or Dad, I got to actually SHOW it!

So, because I have no middle name, and the military requires all "blank spaces" to be filled, they added the letters NMN to my card.

NMN = No Middle Name

I thought it was great, but it confused my sister to no end! For some bizarre reason she thought NMN was her middle name. 

I never really thought about it to tell you the truth, but it sure bothered a lot of other people. "What do you mean you don't have a middle name?" was the most common response. I always replied with "I don't know why . . . my mom never gave me one." It even bothered a group of teenage girls when I was a Girl Scout leader . . . so much so they spent a week trying to come up with one for me! By the end of the week I was dubbed Yolanda Zimbabwe . . . I thought it was funny . . . they thought it was awesome!