n the seventh grade, I expected nothing less of my life than early and smashing success. My favorite author, SE Hinton, had published The Outsiders at 17. My favorite singer, Michael Jackson, had proved a vocal miracle at 10. I imagined a teenage literary career followed by a few plantinum albums and a guest appearance on “Miami Vice.” I’d have to forego that expensive East Coast college, of course, but they say celebrity is the best instructor.
For a kid seemingly riddled by shyness and insecurity, I was damn certain that my appearance on the cover of, I don’t know, People Magazine was a matter of only two things: 1) time and 2) changing my name.

I had no qualms about changing my last name – my strange, and foreign, and unpronounceable last name.
The first day of school:
“Heh-POLE-uh?”
“No, HEP-uh-lah.”
“Hep-YOO-lah?”
“No, HEP-uh-lah.”
“Does this say Hoopla?”
“Umm, yes.”
I have sympathy with anyone who sat with stones in their stomach as the teacher went through roll call. Every Fuchs (pronounced “Fyooks”), every Alfredo (“Call me Al”), every person who wished their name was something other than the stupid name they had been given, and at 12 years old, isn’t that just about everyone?

“I think it’s a beautiful last name,” my mom always said. (Some context: Her maiden name is Leach). “It’s Finnish,” she said, as if this explained things. What was Finnish? Who was Finnish? And what’s a Hepola anyway?
I asked my grandmother. She said it meant “Horse Lake.” Great. That’s sexy.
So I needed a pen name. A Bob Dylan for my Robert Zimmerman. Although I never particularly liked the name Sarah, I couldn’t let go of it. How could I, with a straight face, answer to any of the names I would have chosen for myself? Debbie or Tiffany or Demi? No, Hepola got the axe, but Sarah was here to stay.
I searched the school phone book for inspiration. I wanted something that started with H (Why? So I could keep the embroidered towels?), something pronounceable and distinct. There it was: Shelby Houston.
Shelby Houston was in my grade, nice and more popular than me, but more importantly she had a good, solid Texas surname. Who could mispronounce Houston? (See: New York City) I wrote notes to my best friend Jennifer Lavender and signed them “Sarah Houston.”
“Who the hell is that?” she asked.
“That’s my nom de plume.” (We were taking French.)
“That’s so gay.” (Also, it was the Eighties.)
“What? You sign all your letters Jennifer Smith, like you’re gonna marry Claude.”
“Shh!” Her face went crimson. “He’s right there.”
“If you’re gonna marry Claude, you’ll have to eventually talk to him.”
“Oh my God, he just looked at me. I’m gonna kill you!”
To be fair, Jennifer was fabulously generous, not only agreeing to call me “Sarah Houston” but also helping me realize that “Sarah L. Huston” would be much edgier. The middle initial added gravity; the last name was an homage to the great filmmaker John Huston, director of Annie and something called The Maltese Falcon.
Thankfully, this little pen-name fantasy lost steam. So did my starry-eyed certitude about early literary success. Reality set in, and I’m not bitter about it or anything, and I don’t gnash my teeth or stick my head in a toilet and flush everytime I read about some blasted 23-year-old superstar who wrote the great F'ing American novel because that would be stupid, see, a waste of time, don’t you know? (Flush.) But wait a minute, what was my point?
The point is that I came to like my name.
I don’t LOVE my name. But you know, I kind of like it. I like it because it starts conversations.
Conversations like, “Sarah Hepola: That sounds like a venereal disease!”
Conversations like, “Is your last name Hezbollah?”
Conversations like, “Hepola? Is that like Hepatitis?”
And in case you suspect me of hypberbole, let me say that I have had every one of those conversations. But really, I like my name because I’m the only one who has it.

Well, I thought I was.

Recently, it has come to my attention that there are at least two other Sarah Hepolas in the world. I discovered this one afternoon while performing a leisurely US Search on my name. Sarah H. Hepola lives in Perham, Minnesota, with her husband Russ. She is 74. Sarah Martha Hepola lives in Perham, Minnesota. She is 70.
I was devastated.
And curious. What are they like? Do we share anything besides a name (and a Finnish heritage)? Do they resent the fact that any time a friend looks them up on the internet, that friend is directed to a smart-ass, foul-mouthed blogger who raves about pink glitter?

About a year ago, I saw a documentary called The Sweetest Sound. It was about a documentarian, Alan Berliner, who gathered all the Alan Berliners in the world into one room for an evening (guests included Alain Berliner, the famous French filmmaker of Ma Vie en Rose, for whom the documentarian is often mistaken). It’s a fascinating movie – not merely because of the odd obsession at its core or the amazing work it must have required – but because since I was 12 years old and practicing my autograph, I have never thought so much about my name. My name. My name.

So I wanna dedicate this to Sarah M. and Sarah H., my septuagenarian namesakes. We are and shall remain Sarah Hepola: the few, the proud, the Finnish.