Flash Fiction Friday--A Life Story

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KRISANN GENTRY

It’s an interesting question, and honestly not one I’ve been asked before, so I’ll give you one for finding that. But no, you’re right. My real name isn’t Shane Amos.

It’s Seamus McLeod. I’ve always hated it.

Kids were mean, you know? And they’d say the most idiotic stuff, not even being bright about it, like, ‘Seamus is a shame-to-us. Seamus riding on the bus.’ Dumb kid stuff that shouldn’t matter.

I told my mom I wanted a cool name. I’d be going by Sam from now on.

She didn’t even turn to me. “You were named for your great grandfather,” just kept scrubbing at some dishes or some such.

Irish guilt is wily and strong. I can’t shame a dead man by not accepting at least part of his name. There I’m trying to escape this idea of shame and it’s coming right back, shaming me into keeping it around.

So I told her, “Fine. Samus, then. Sam for short.”
But I wasn’t allowed to play video games. I didn’t know there was a game called Metroid with a hero called Samus. I didn’t know SHE WAS A GIRL.

So, yeah. I didn’t go by Samus very long.

Shane Amos was what I started using in boarding school. It stuck pretty well, and since I found nearly all my bandmates there, after I’d been doing open mics in pubs and such, we formed the group around the sort of stage name that became the only name I heard myself called by.

So that’s how we got our band name too, Shane Amos and the Blanks. If we’d known then we were gonna be inducted into the rock & roll hall of fame all these years later, we probably would have thought about it a bit longer, I think.

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Read more stories from this prompt!
Linda's submission
Josiah's submission
Jonathan's submission
Moody's submission

Want to make one of your own? Next week's prompt is NON-FICTION.

Write a short essay from the starting point, "Family Traits."