Hey there, today's episode is hosted by the poet Dianelli Antigua. Enjoy, and I'll be back on June 22nd. I'm Dianelli Antigua, and this is the slowdown.

When I was younger, I learned the order of the planets through a sentence I'll never forget.

My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.

This mnemonic device was playful and ridiculous,

but I can see now how it was a way of holding something vast inside something small. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Back then, Pluto was still a planet. But that changed in 2006, when scientists said Pluto didn't meet the definition of a planet anymore. Its gravitational pull wasn't dominant enough, so it was reclassified and renamed a dwarf planet.

Pluto didn't disappear, though.

Out there, in the astronomical unknown, it kept its shape.

It kept orbiting the sun.

Even its five moons remained, just as always.

The only thing that changed was what we decided to call it.

I've been thinking about my own naming,

how I was almost named Sandy after Sandra D in Greece.

It was the first movie my mother watched when she came to the United States before she knew

English. But then, according to family lore, when she was pregnant with me, my mother dreamt of letters,

gathering them one by one until my name took shape.

Sometimes I wonder who I would have become if I had a different name, how my life would have changed. Maybe I wouldn't

have felt that quiet humiliation on the first days of class, waiting for my name to be mangled

during attendance. My eight letters distorted

into something easier

for their mouths,

even after I corrected them.

...