Why I'm Not a Planet and Who Wrapped Me

First of all, I am not a planet. That would be Mars, with an *s*. I'm Marz with a *z*. I've been that for twenty-mumble-something years. It probably actually started one of those nights up on the mantle, but I digress. I always wanted a nickname. But my Father, wouldn't allow it. "Your name is Martha, if I wanted to call you something else, I would have named you something else". I thought Martha was old fashioned and stuffy and I wanted a nickname that, well....wasn't. However, battling my Father was like battling a brick wall. You're not going to get anything but sore hands.

When I went away to college everything changed. I was away from home, I was living on my own...sort of...I lived in the dorms. Made new friends, and they shortened my name, to Mar. That worked for me. My name, just shorter. I also had the total "little miss innocent face" thing going for me. Nobody ever suspected me of doing anything wrong....Ever. Which, except once, worked to my advantage. We'll save that *once* for another time. My last 2 years I had a single room and as it was legal to drink in the state of NY, we would drive the 15 miles to cross the state line and buy alcohol to take back to campus. Yes, we actually were smart enough to not drink and drive, mostly.

My college was a small State College, now University in upstate PA, and all state schools were dry campuses. So, this contraband liquor was brought onto campus by my friends and brought where? My room. Why? Because I looked more innocent than anyone else and no one would ever suspect me of breaking ANY school regulations. So, I hid all of the booty in my closet, hidden behind a little cabinet i put in there, and no one ever clued in. When someone wanted their stuff, they just came to my room to visit, and we made them drinks while they were there and off they'd go with said drink in hand and no one was the wiser.

Back then, there was a candy bar called a Mars Bar. They were great. Another extinct candy at this point, I think they disappeared somewhere in the 90s. My friends started taking the wrappers from the candy bars and taping them to my door. After all, it was Mar's Bar. I had the only bar on the floor and everyone but the Resident Hall Assistant knew it. I think at one point, there were 30 wrappers taped to my door, amid all of the other things my door was decorated with.

I eventually took the wrappers down, all but one so as not to draw *too* much attention to myself, and I wrote MarZ Bar on my dry erase board that hung on the door for people to leave messages on. Just a little change in the name, but enough to keep the idea intact.

So, I finally had my nickname, even though it never came into my house. My Father to his dying day called me Martha. I didn't have to fight the impenetrable wall and kill my hands, I just had to quietly go around it...sort of.