You Can Call Me Kwan if You Want to

I don’t know how many people (other than my friends at DU) know this, but Michelle Kwan is a recent graduate from DU. Actually, if I were a business major I would have had a pretty big chance of having her in one of my classes. I know a few people who did get the chance of having her in class and meeting her. Well, since Haan rhymes with Kwan and since we both went to the same school, there were a couple of incidences where people got confused with which Michelle they were going to be meeting. The first happened the summer before I went to college, I was making a phone call to an old friend and they misunderstood what I said when I first said who I was. It created a brief awkward moment because I said, “Hi, this is Michelle Haan.” And the response I got was, “Okay……” For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should just pretend I dialed the wrong number or just keep talking. . . I kept talking. It was only a few moments later where the voice on the other line said, “Wait, did you say ‘Michelle Haan’? I thought you said ‘Michelle Kwan’.” I still laugh whenever I remember the incident. I had never come across the confusion before.

I found out about the second confused incident a few weeks after starting school that fall. My roommate confided in me that when she first read the roommate selection she glanced over it and the rhyme in her head took over the actual words written. She was very excited about getting to live with Michelle Kwan; I can just imagine her jumping around with excitement. She was in disbelief. Good thing she read the name again; although, I hope she wasn’t too disappointed to find out that I wasn’t an amazing ice skater.

I still meet people at school and listen to them pause over my last name and marvel in the rhyme that it creates. However, what I get pleasure out of more is the laughter and utter delight that they get when I tell them my whole name (first, middle, and last) said straight through. That causes more laughter than the whole Haan/Kwan ordeal. Especially if they say it really fast. ;-)

This past weekend I’ve wished that my name was indeed Kwan instead of Haan. The Irish don’t joke when they talk about freezing rain and ice storms. I walked outside on Friday morning expecting a wet ground from rain. What I got instead was a town turned into ice rink. I almost fell on my derrière (excuse the French) several times before I reached my destination. I think that if I got a sled with metal runners I could just slide down the road to the City Centre to get groceries; however, I don’t know how I’d get back up the hill. Maybe I should invest in ice picks for my shoes. Whatever I decide, I think I’m going to take my “falling gracefully” skills from snowboarding and try implementing the same idea into ice skating. This will be a fun little experiment to try. If I come home with broken bones and lot’s of bruises, please know that I am thoroughly enjoying trying to live up to my other name of Kwan.

Let’s just hope the airplanes know how to ice skate better than I do. I would like to be home for Christmas.