It’s always a bit of an odd experience to be from a town that has the same name as some other town on the opposite side of the country, but it happens more than you might think. How many Springfields are there? I can think of two Des Moines off the top of my head, and of course, there’s the eternal divide between Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine. That’s the famous one, but the one experienced by the town across the river from Portland, Oregon, is worse. Yes, I’m talking about Vancouver, Washington, and all the attendant problems from being the smaller of the two cities with a famous name.

Vancouver is the oldest settlement in Washington state, and we have the fort to prove it. We’re also older than the other Vancouver by 10 years. Does this stop everyone from forgetting we exist? No. Does it stop us from being slightly embarrassed about our hometown? Also no. Anyone from Vancouver and the surrounding environs has had the experience of meeting someone Not From Around Here and, when asked where we’re from, saying “Vancouver. No, the other one.” When we can get away with it, most of us just say we’re from Portland. Everybody knows Portland.

While Vancouver, B.C., can lay claim to being the biggest city in British Columbia, Vancouver, Washington barely cracks the top five cities in Washington. We’re number four. Behind Tacoma. As anyone from Washington can tell you, behind Tacoma is not anywhere you want to be for long. We sit right on the border between Oregon and Washington, and we’re so parasitically linked to Portland that our Wikipedia page lists us as “the largest suburb of Portland, Oregon.” How’s that for embarrassing? Most of the time, the rest of the state forgets that we exist. We might as well be Oregonians as far as your average Seattleite is concerned.

In Vancouver’s long history of being mistaken for the greater of the two Vancouvers, the worst examples happened in 2010, when Vancouver, B.C. got to host the Winter Olympics. More than a few confused reporters found themselves about six hours south of where they needed to be, knocking around “downtown” Vancouver and wondering where all the athletes were. I was 14 when the Vancouver Olympics were held, and I remember being irritated that the other Vancouver had finally upstaged us for good. There was an inevitability to it all, though. How could there not be when our greatest claims to fame are being the only stoplight on the entire length of I-5 and being too cheap to fix the bridge that’s causing it?

Being from Vancouver, Washington, is like being a mouse in a cage with an elephant. Most of the time, nobody even knows the mouse is there, unless it does something embarrassing like lure the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at one of the local high schools. But even so, there’s a certain pride that most people from Vancouver exhibit. After all, we’re older than the other Vancouver, we’re close enough to Portland to regularly avoid paying sales tax, and we’re home to the best burger chain in the Northwest. (Shout-out to Burgerville! Please give me free food.) The small things like that are what keeps us answering, when asked where we’re from, “Vancouver. The other one.”