Every time I go to the doctor’s for my yearly checkup, we go through the same routine. I hand the woman at the desk my insurance card and she fiddles with the computer for a while before saying, “I know you aren’t a new patient, why can’t I find you in the computer?”

Inwardly, I curse myself for forgetting to say this before I hand her the card and reply, “I was told on a past visit that they mistakenly put a space between the e and the p in my name when they first put me into the computer.”

Sure enough, she tries my name with the space and I show up and she apologizes because they can’t make changes to a name once it’s in the system and I tell her not to worry about it, it’s not a big deal. It’s a well rehearsed exchange. Sometimes she varies it by making small talk as she takes my co-pay about how some people with a d and e in front of their names do put a space and I say sociably that I know but we don’t. It’s just DePiano.

Then I usually spend the next few minutes in the waiting room wondering what my life would be like if I signed my name Hillary de Piano but just picturing that seems like something out of an alternate universe so that train of thought never lasts long. The little de in front makes me feel like we are counts and countesses or something.

Other then this yearly conversation, the non-space in my last name has never occupied much of my thoughts. Sure, the capital P throws people off so while I do get at least half of my communication addressed to Depiano instead of DePiano, that’s about it. As last names go, it’s pretty easy to spell. D. E. Then the word piano. Simple enough.

On a recent visit to my grandparents, I notice their checkbook and their new checks have a very plain Arial type font for their name and address while they’ve always had something more script like. But I do a double take because they’ve written out our last name as De Piano. As in, De [space] Piano.

“You guys put a space between the e and the p in DePiano?” I ask my grandparents, half sure it was a typo.

“You don’t?” My aunt asks, with a tone that implies I have six heads.

“No. I’ve been writing it as one word my entire life.”

“Do you at least capitalize the P?” she asks me which may seem like a stupid question but I felt her, this was one of these “my whole life is a lie” moments when you are literally sure of nothing.

“Of course I capitalize the P,” I say. “But we’ve always written it as one word with no space.”

“There’s always been a space,” my aunt says as if reciting a law and my grandparents agree.

On the ride back home, I’m desperately trying to picture the signatures of my mom, dad and brother. We all write it as one word, don’t we? Am I going insane?

“Dad,” I ask the next time I see him, “do you put a space in between the e and the p in DePiano?”

“No. It’s one word.” Dad says with a tone that implies I’m a little old to be spelling my own name wrong.

Somewhat relieved that I’m not losing it, I fill him in on the fact that apparently the entire rest of his family views our last name as two words. He doesn’t believe me and, frankly, I don’t blame him. I mean, how is this possible? Grandma and Grandpa taught my father how to write. He and his little sister grew up side by side. How has the fact that he apparently writes our name differently then all of the rest of them never come up before?

My mom joins us and is equally flummoxed for she, like the rest of us, writes DePiano without the space. My dad still thinks I’ve got the story wrong when we find a statement from an account that my grandparents set up for my father. Sure enough, there is the space between the e and the p and he finally believes me but is completely thrown for a loop. It may not seem like a big deal, it’s only a little space, but to find out that you’ve been using a different spelling of your name then the rest of your family for, oh say, you’re entire life is disconcerting.

Finally dad decides that since he isn’t changing how he spells it and they aren’t changing how they spell it, it isn’t worth talking about and leaves. But my mother and I still want to know how the heck something like this could have happened. We are still largely at a loss.

Here’s my only theory:

When written by hand, DePiano and De Piano don’t look that different, especially in a signature. But when typed out, it’s immediately obvious that something is different.

This could never happen today simply because you see your name and the names of your family written out in text all the time. Addresses are printed by a machine on the mail you get, you see your name typed out on a computer screen and you learn to type at a young age. Someone would have noticed or pointed out that one person in the family was writing the name different then everyone else and the behavior would have changed if it happened today.

Now let’s think about when my dad was young. He went to school in the 50s-60s. He and my aunt both had typing classes but not together. Other then that, the majority of the time he saw his name was hand written. Did he show his typing assignments to my grandparents? Probably not or, if he did, they didn’t notice the space or comment on it. So by the time he’s seeing his name typed out on a regular basis he’s already in college, he’s no longer living at home to notice that his is missing the space that they have.

It still seems odd but this is the closest I can come to an explanation of how we ended up in this mess. I know rationally that they must be “right” and that the space in the middle of the name is correct but, because I’ve been writing it the other way my entire life, their way just looks wrong to me. If we are supposed to put the space, why isn’t the d lowercase?

Life is full of strange little mysteries…