When it comes to names, I get three: Jess, Jessie, Jessica. The original is Jessica, but I don’t care what people call me; I have learned to respond to all of them. There is one nickname that I got, that only a couple of my friends know about and are allowed to call me. After I got that nickname, we started giving each other nicknames with the same ending as mine. We still remember it, and still sometimes use it.

Jessi is the nickname I got about three years ago. I know it looks like someone forgot to put an e at the end of Jessie, or how some people spell Jessie. But its not. We decided to put a weird pronunciation on it. The “correct” pronunciation in our minds is Jess-eye, Jeh-sigh, or JessI. After I got my nickname, my friends who helped create it put the “eye” sound after their names in replace of the last letter or last two letters of their names. We were the “eye” group.

I got the name three years ago in March. I was at Natalie’s birthday party. We were driving down to Lake Rathbun for her party. We were staying the night and going home the next day. It was a hour and a half long car ride, so Natalie brought her Ipad, and we brought other entertainment, like books, Ipods, etc. Natalie and I were bored, so we decided to play the game Life on her Ipad. We played one round, but then another one of our friends wanted to join, so we started over. At the beginning of the game you get to type your name in, so Natalie started putting our names in.

When she put my name it, she tried to put Jessie rather than Jessica, because that’s what she called me the most. When she was typing, she made a spelling mistake, and it went in as Jessi. We saw it, and started putting pronunciations on it, but when Natalie said Jess-eye, it stuck. I was Jessi for most of the car trip, and a lot of the party. To this day, I am still sometimes called Jessi. The first couple times it was slightly annoying, but I learned to love it, and I still do. I love it because it’s mine, no one else has it. All Jessicas get called Jess, Jessie, or Jessica. But Jessi is original to me, and that is what I love about it.