Names are a funny thing. One of the few matters in this world that I've gotten. I mean, I'm smart and all, I understand why the leaves on trees change colors, and why they sun goes away and all of that, but I've just never gotten names. Why on earth would you pick a name for a person after only knowing them for a few seconds, or even worse before they were born?
Well, my birth name is Samantha Elizabeth Dalton. But according to everyone, (and I mean everyone), it just doesn't fit me. Samantha is for frilly girls. Girls that wear pink tiered dresses to church every Sunday, and put their hair in braids. Samantha is perfect for girls who plan out what they want to wear the next day in their head during class, and paint their nails every night. Girls like Samantha put hearts instead of dots for their I's, and write their name and they name of the boy they like over and over in their pink sparkly notebook. In other words, Samantha doesn't fit me.
But, Sam doesn't work for me either. It just doesn't. And neither does Sammy. I've even tried Elizabeth, and all the other names that go with that, like Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Eliza, everyname imaginable. But they just don't work. So that's why my name is Sunflower. Just Sunflower.
You might think I'm crazy, but that's exactly what everyone calls me. I was given that name the summer I was five, the last happy summer I ever had. Back when dad still was here, and mom wasn't grumpy. But I'll get into that later.
Anyways, my dad was the one who had given me the name sunflower in the first place. For a few reasons.
One, was my hair. Yes, my hair. My dad loved my hair. He said it was the prettiest hair he had ever seen. According to him, it was soft, like sunflower leaves, and as bright as the petels. I never really thought of my hair as even being the slightest bit pretty, but it's always been the envy of everyone, according to my dad. (Or maybe he's just saying that because he's my dad.) That might sound stupid, but it isn't the only reason.
The second reason, is because that summer, a young couple, the Wilson's moved to town. They came to our small New York town with lots of ideas. One of them being a sunflower maze for the children. So they went on their way, and built a maze out of their field of pre-planted sunflowers, and opened it to everyone. For free.
And that's where I spent most of my time. Begging my dad to walk me up the road to the Wilson's barn, and letting me roam around until I got hungry. And then seating myself right in the middle of the maze and munching on the seeds, and finding fallen buds to fix in my hair. I spent all of my days there.
Because I loved that maze so much my dad thought it would be more fitting to call me Sunflower instead of Samantha. Even when we moved out of town to New York City, my name came with me.
Whenever I'm forced to say my name, everyone looks at me funny, but I've gotten used to it. It fits me. Sunflower. Sunflower Dalton. That's me.