One little e

My parents , William and Michelle Smith met at a bowling alley , dated for six months then married and had me a year later. Our surname was changed to Johnson by the justice of the peace who marrie

d them.

I was born three months overdue on 6:00 AM September 10, 1984 at Silas B Hays Army Community Hospital in Fort Ord, Ca. During labor my head got caught under my mother’s pelvis and we almost died. They did an emergency C-section and out I came: 6 pounds , eight ounces and a full head of hair.

Now that the David Copperfield crap is out of the way, my name is Tyerone Michale Johnson. My mother decided to spell my names weird and every since that extra e has been nothing but trouble.

No my first name isn’t tee- ron, tuh ron, or tye ron. it’s tye as in bow tie and rone as in rhymes with phone. Yes I’ve had my name butchered six ways to Sunday and back , but it doesn’t stop there.

Every time paper work is needed I constantly have to correct the misspelling which is a pain in the ass. When I was younger and had outpatient surgery every three weeks or so, if the referral showed up on time my name was always spelled wrong and they couldn’t go ahead with the procedure.

In sixth grade Erykah Badu’s song Call Tyrone was a hit. My classmates would sing it out of the blue and laugh at me. I never hated my first more than at that point. Over the years I experimented with pseudonyms: Tye, TJ, Rone, T-bone, and Mike but none of them quite fit. So I’ve decided to embrace the one little e and all the trouble that comes with it.

My name’s Tyerone and this is my story.