Woman gets petty revenge on high school bully by stealing her baby name. AITA?
'My son's name helped me get a small dose of petty revenge against a girl who constantly tried to compete with me in high school.'
So when I was in high school, I was on the speech and debate team. If you're unfamiliar, think drama club meets young democrats/young republicans. I mostly did the public speaking events that focused on real-world political topics, and I loved it.
I usually made it to finals in my events, but I had fun even when I didn't, and made some really great friends from other schools. If I wasn't in finals, I would go watch others who were competing to support my teammates.
There was a girl I saw at almost every tournament. Let's call her M. M and I didn't do any of the same events because she focused more on the drama side of speech and debate. But M was constantly comparing herself to other people, and would get really arrogant if she made it to finals in her events and I didn't make it to finals in mine.
Any time she didn't make it to finals in her events, she would cry and accuse the judges of not being fair, and would then pout in the cafeteria all throughout finals and sometimes wouldn't even go to awards to support her teammates who did win something.
In conversations, she was also a big 'one-upper.' You could never talk about anything fun or cool you did, because she'd always done something cooler or more fun. If you've ever seen Glee, she was a real life Rachel Berry.
She and I are still friends on social media, although we haven't personally spoken very much since high school. I've watched her flaunt now two different failed engagements, along with a slew of random jobs that never seem to work out for very long. I don't post as much on social media, so she didn't really know what was going on in my life.
My long term partner and I found out in early March that we were pregnant. We had been trying for a baby and didn't think it would ever happen because we had been told by doctors that our chances of conceiving naturally were slim. So this baby means everything to us.
Before we even got pregnant, we had agreed on a name for our baby, if we were to have the boy we both wanted. In high school, my grandmother had told me that if she had ever had a son, this was the name she was going to give him. However, she only had two girls.
I fell in love with the name immediately and told her that if I ever have a son, I would give him this name. She passed away while I was in college, but I'm still in love with the name and fully intend to honor that promise I made to my grandmother. Thankfully, my partner also fell in love with this name when I told him about it.
Flash forward to the present day. My partner and I were about a week away from finding out if we were having a boy or a girl, and then one day on Instagram, I see a post from M announcing that she is pregnant with a boy. She's due two months before me.
At this point, I hadn't announced my own pregnancy publicly yet, so M didn't know, but some our mutual friends knew. One of them who was really close to her informed me that she had shared her baby name list with her and that the name my grandmother picked out was on the list.
M had specifically said that she remembered me talking about liking that name at a speech tournament in high school, and that the name had 'stuck with her ever since,' particularly because the name is shared by her favorite poet.
She told our mutual friend that that name was her top choice, but her partner had a different preference, so they were still going back and forth about it.
My partner and I recently found out that we are also having a boy, and are using the name we love regardless of what M names her baby, because what difference is it really going to make, especially because we don't even live in the same state and these children will probably never meet.
It's also not a unique/rare name by any means, so to us it feels silly to act like only one of us can use it. But this is where I got my small dose of petty revenge.
After we learned the gender of the baby, we decided to go ahead and announce our pregnancy publicly, and since we already had his name picked out, and it's something we know we're not going to change our minds about since it has so much sentimental value, we decided to include his name in the announcement.
So M learned that I was also pregnant, having a boy, and using the name I loved. I would be lying if I said that I hadn't thought about M's reaction when my partner and I made the decision to also announce our baby's name.
M hasn't said anything to me about the baby or about our name choice, but apparently she has had a lot to say to our mutual friends. She said if she can talk her partner into it, she still wants to use that name for her son, and that since her baby will be born first, if I do end up using it for my son as well, then I'm just copying her.
She has apparently become obsessed with trying to find out details about my pregnancy and my relationship with my partner, since I don't post as much on social media. She's been harassing our mutual friends asking about me, to the point where several of them are starting to cut ties with her because it's getting to be too much.
Even her partner has reportedly told her that she's going overboard, and has apparently vetoed this name for their son because he thinks she's too weirdly fixated on it and me and wants her to stop 'stirring the pot.'
So I'm having a baby with the man of my dreams, getting to finally use the name my grandmother fell in love with decades ago, and as an added bonus, my friends from high school are finally seeing how weird M is for the way she constantly tries to compete with different people.
Here were the top comments from readers:
Lol, even if she tries telling people you copied her, deep down she, the mutual friends and especially her partner will all know the truth.
Let's hope she won't go creepy-crazy on you.
I think M even publicly spoke about how she fell in love with the name after hearing OP talk about how this name had meaning for her grandmother. She already outed herself as the copycat, so the creep factor might already be stuck on M. Hopefully, OP will continue to have virtually nothing to do with M.
Write a social media post about the origin of your future child's name. That will surely make her a copycat.
Congrats and all the best for you and your family!
Get email addresses with your future sons name. You don't want her beating you to it.
Sounds like you should cut all contact with her or she will forever try to one up you in life and life is too short to be bothered with her kind of drama.