Last week a friend and I drove for just shy of four hours in the pouring rain to attend the funeral for a friend’s father. We’re never at a loss for things to talk about, but I remembered a story I once heard on NPR about simple questions that were designed to encourage interesting conversations with strangers.

I found the story interesting enough that I began using some of those questions during the first week of school to get my sophomores talking in non-confrontational/non-controversial ways. Among those questions was the following:

If you could begin your life over again and could completely change your first name, what would you prefer to be called?

It seems like a simple enough question, but it really isn’t and, when I asked my traveling companion for her answer, we both sat there somewhat stumped for quite a while as I had neglected to come up with one for myself. It became clear that, after a certain number of years, one’s identity can be way too interwoven with the name given at birth to easily imagine life with a different one.

I think I like the name Nora, but if I wanted to go completely nuts I’d choose FRIDAY–my favorite day of the week. You?