My GROWN ADULT uncle decided to rename TINY CHILD me as "Roland" and 20-odd years later he still addresses me as such in all conversation and correspondence. I forget that it's weird. People probably hear it in public and find it odd.

Yeah, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at Xanthe. But if those girls were spelt Xoe and Zanthe I would think it was a typo.

Whoa, I never would've thought that for "Rebel" — I really like it.

I love Beatrice, too, and handily any child I might have would have two grandmothers named it. I'd love it to be Beatriz to change it up a bit but Imaginary Future Baby's surname is Spanish too, so she would have a decidedly Spanish name for a non-Spanish-speaking kid (and if we moved back to Los Angeles she'd get all…

It's not even slightly spiking on the Name Wizard website thing, which surprises me because I love it and quite a few other people I know have mentioned it, so I thought it was about to hit the big time. Maybe it's spiking RIGHT NOW and doesn't show up on the charts yet.

My mum knows a Marvellous Victory, and I will totally take that child seriously when he grows up. Marvellous Victory Smith (not his real surname, of course) is really brilliant, but just plain old Marvellous Smith is really amazing. I love it.

That is a brilliant name. I love super-duper old-school nun names like Immaculata.

I used to want to have an unweildy name like that when I was a kid, and then I grew up and realised how annoying that would be from an administrative point of view… and I still want one, anyway. I would do that to a child, except I suspect my bloke wouldn't allow it.

Yep; I got free/cheap dental care but then got too old, so it suddenly was a lot more expensive… and then I moved to the US, where the cost of fixing my teeth when they broke was absolutely not something I could take on (ie, the only way they said they could fix my broken teeth – a medical problem – was with super…

I know I can put it all on my credit cards, but basically right now there are so many other things that should be a priority (like getting out of my parents' house!) that it seems crazy to put myself in debt to have pretty teeth. The NHS treatment I need (medically) will cost me more than I can reasonably afford…

That's very true! But what I mean is that looking back now, I realise I should've spent the money on the cosmetic stuff back when I was younger because now I don't have the disposable income for it but then I did (plus, when I was younger I was more vain and would've prioritised it more!)

I'm 32 and have been wanting to sort out my teeth for a good two decades (although two decades ago I thought I *was* sorting out my teeth… and then my wisdom teeth came in and fucked 'em all up) and it still doesn't seem like an option financially, so I'm sort of thinking it's not worth doing anymore and I should've…

Holy mother of God. I need to do more yoga… or something (probably something more substantial than yoga, but… baby steps).

Yep. My teeth are *still* causing me problems based on getting broken because they grew all weird and I should've had braces. (And now I'm filling up my credit cards getting the cheapest possible metal crowns to make them even uglier than they already are but hopefully a bit less breakable… ugh.)

Hee!

I *love* that Americans don't have Christmas crackers, because there have been so many times in my life that Americans have said, "Uh, you don't know what [x] is?! Seriously? How do you not know that?!" and finding out that they probably didn't know what Christmas crackers are gave me a tiny and much belated sense of…

Pig liver and heart, wrapped in caul fat!

There were tons of stereotypes that I didn't know about until I was in my mid/late 20s, and the "black people like fried chicken" was one of them; I had never heard about it or noticed it, ever, and I'm packed full of tons of random general knowledge so I thought it was odd that that bit had passed me by.

I'm seriously on the verge of looking up the definition of a box, to see if a tube can be considered a tube-shaped box. I can't believe I'm thinking about this so much.

Laser removal really didn't hurt me much at all, but it's hard to get 'em — the treatment works best on really dark hair on really pale skin and the less contrast there is the harder it is to get it to work, so my bikini line works really well (super black hair!) but my upper lip is trickier and requires more…