This is a Wayback Machine of things I don’t remember, but a story that I have been told, as best I can remember how it goes.

When I was still in the womb, there were the obvious conversations about names – like you do.  My parents decided that Dad got to name a girl, and Mom would get the final say on names for a boy.  I, not being a boy, therefore fell to Dad’s judgement of proper names.  Obviously there was discussion and suggestions and talk, but that was the final call lay out.

It was declared that if I had red hair and green eyes, I was to be Colleen Aurora – making my initials “CAT”.  Since there was red hair in the family, this was a likely possible outcome.  Anything else and I was to be Katrina Irene – “KIT” as it were.  Colleen Aurora, Maiden of the Morning Lights, or Katrina Irene, Irene for my maternal grandmother I assume.

However I was an emergency c-section birth.  Even if it hadn’t been customary of the time to have the father in the waiting room, there was nobody in the room but Mom, me, and the medical staff because of the nature of the issues I caused.  Apparently there was a lot of turning, beyond the normal one flip to a head-down posture, along with other complications that I’m assured were all my fault.  Hee hee.  I was trouble from the start.

So after the birth comes the time to give the name – Mom took a look at me and decided that I did not look like a Katrina at all.  So due to the “being there” override protocol (I just made that up) she gave me the Colleen Aurora name, and the CAT initials.

As a result, my brother Andrew still has claim to a greater hurricane – Colleen has been used a few times for Tropical Depressions and the like, but I have never been responsible for wreaking havoc on the mainland.  Had I been Katrina, obviously, I would totally have trounced his tropical terror legacy.  But alas, he was the storm to be reckoned with in the family.  However I did get some of the coolest initials possible, paving the way to my crazy cat lady status.  Fair trade off, I think.