On January 25, 2005, The Plain White T's released a song that forever changed my life: "Hey There Delilah." If you've never heard the song before, click this!

Yes, like the song, my name is Dalila, but at the time, I was not a college student living in New York City, "a thousand miles away" from my significant other. I was actually in the second grade, but the song didn't really get popular until the springtime of that year. I remember we went on a class field trip, and the song started playing on the radio.

When I heard the part with my name, I was astounded. My name was never special to me, and it wasn't taken from the Bible like everyone thought, just from a baby book my parents looked through.

Eventually, the song received a lot of airplay, earned the number one on the Billboard charts, etc. It became a hit.

As you can assume from here, this is when everyone started to say "Hey There Delilah" when they first met me.

I'll admit, it was a bit annoying at first, and I would get pretty pissed when people said it. It would especially frustrate me when people who used to know how to spell my name started spelling it incorrectly, even my teachers. They would say, "Like the song, right?"

No, not like the song. Like the way my parents wanted it spelled. The correct way.

The summer of 2006, I went to a local day camp, where I'd continually hear the song from everyone there as well (both campers and counselors).

Eventually, one of my counselors saw the constant frustration that I'd have with the song, so he pulled me to the side and started talking to me. He explained to me that he understood my frustration, as his name was Andy, and when he was younger, his friends would ask him where his toys were at and if he was going to "Pizza Planet" anytime soon. One of his friends even went so far with the joke as to buy him an actual Woody doll on a dare, and make him carry it around school like he was the character from Toy Story.

Needless to say, I understood where he was coming from. He explained afterwards that he started to own his name. He'd laugh at the joke too, and not be bothered by people's constant teasing. I took Andy's advice, and I even listened to the song a few times. Having my name in a song wasn't a punishment, it was a privilege. And I began to not take it so much for granted.

So please, sing it to me all you want, it's actually pretty great.