Three Rachels, one confused sophomore

“Rachel!”

Half asleep and dozing off due to the monotony of the class, I immediately jerked my head up at the sound of my name, like Dug, the talking dog from “Up.”  I drowned in my sleepiness, my blurred vision blending in with distant voices, as I painfully fought it off to pay attention to my teacher.  

Unlike Dug, there was no squirrel waiting for me, but only a splash of red on my cheeks when I realized I was not the “Rachel” my teacher was referring to.

Three periods with two different Rachels in each class has resulted in an innumerable number of these slightly irritating and uncomfortable moments that have pushed the reserves of my resilience to withstand mortifying moments.

One moment during my sixth-period math class marked the beginning of a handful of embarrassing moments.

As my math teacher P.J. Yim repeatedly called out “Rachel,” I continued to inadvertently respond “Yes.” It was a series of “Rachel! Yes! Rachel! Yes! Rachel! Yes! Rachel! Yes!” that dragged on for a few painful seconds before it clicked in my head that once again I was the absent-minded “Rachel,” who simply was confused by which “Rachel” Mr. Yim was referring to.

People around me burst into laughter, bombarding my ears with the menacing sounds of “Ha Ha Ha Ha.” After this chiming ended, all self-doubt and embarrassment  transformed into — once again — a flush of red coloring my cheeks.

Sometimes I wish that I could have flown away with the old man, Carl, and Russell, the enthusiastic Boy Scout, in their house of balloons to escape this world of one-too-many Rachels.

But to my dismay, my life is not a Pixar movie, but a box of chocolates, as Forest Gump would say, and Rachel was the name I was born with. Fifteen years ago, as I was still hibernating in the safe abode of my mom’s womb, my dad spent a lot of his evenings watching “Friends,” a popular comedy from the 1990s. One of the characters caught my dad’s attention. Her name (surprise, surprise) was Rachel.

Having never seen an episode of “Friends,” I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of my namesake. “A blonde, self-egotist” as Wikipedia describes Rachel on “Friends” is not exactly the self-image I’m trying to portray.

Thanks to Rachel Green, I’ve had to face the aggravating fact that probably 20 percent of the female population is named Rachel.

There is no originality or uniqueness to my name anymore; sometimes it feels as if I am just one of the dozens of Rachels walking on campus.  

There is, however, only one me, one who despises the horrendous beverage stains on the brims of cups, who starts drooling just at the thought of a perfectly made sushi and who thinks the sound of new pens on paper is as horrible of a moment in music history as Justin Bieber’s song “Baby.”

Sadly, my somewhat uniqueness cannot free me from the bondages of having the name Rachel.

Some days as I walk through the halls during passing or break, I will hear the familiarity of the sound of my name ring in my ears as someone shouts, “Rachel!” Like Dug, the talking dog,  my attention drifts into the direction of the sound, and my head jerks once again.

So maybe sophomore year will be filled with a lot of unnecessary head-jerks, but at least I will have the reassurance that my name will always appear on those personalized, tourist knick-knacks.