My name is Liz and my middle name is Bacon. Yes, Bacon. No, I’m not kidding. The first day of preschool I was so excited that I told my classmates my middle name. “Bacon and eggs! Bacon and eggs!” they sang. It would not be until I received my driver’s license at ago 16, would the fact of my middle name surface again. And only because showing off my driver’s license, a prized commodity, would reveal the name. I never asked my Mom why my middle name was Bacon. I just eventually came to know it. Bacon was my Mom’s maiden name. As I would come to explain, this was not a name my parents choose for me, but a name I inherited.

by Liz Bacon Jones
Oakland, CA