The social media post was harsh.

It read something like, “Why do parents think changing the spelling of a child’s name makes the child special? Raising a child to be special makes them special!”

Well, my dad gave me a special name and raised me to be special, I inwardly huffed.

I’m Wendi with an “i.”

At the end.

Not “Windy,” as some people think when I tell them my name is spelled with an “i.”

They also want to know if I did that myself (no), if it’s spelled that way on my birth certificate (yes), and if my siblings also have names spelled the — ahem — wrong way.

They don’t. I say it’s because they’re not as awesome as me. My mom says it’s because she learned when your kid’s name is spelled “wrong,” they’ll never have anything monogrammed.

I’m fine with it.

I’m not fine with other people named Wendi-with-an-i. I have a sense of propriety over the spelling of my name. Like I’m the Highlander, and there can be only one.

The spelling of my name came up recently with my oldest child, who had begun to wonder why my name wasn’t spelled the conventional “Wendy.”

I weaved the tale my mom has told me my whole life: My father thought me too special for “Wendy.” So he spelled my name with an “i.”

At the end.

Because I’m not “Windy.”

He then — contrary to that post — went on to raise me to be special, which is probably debatable, but I think I’m pretty great, and isn’t that all that matters?

I later relayed my daughter’s query to my dad.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“You thought I was too special to be ‘Wendy.’”

He burst out laughing.

“Ask a question and you’ll get one thing from your mother, something different from me. That,” my dad said, meaning the spelling of my name, “was all your mother.”

Wait. I was never “Wendi” with an “i” because my daddy thinks I’m special? My entire identity was gone. I was Luke Skywalker discovering Darth Vader is his dad.

I have always worn the spelling of my name like an Olympian wears a gold medal. Each time I corrected a professor or a boyfriend or my mortgage company, it was because my dad thinks I’m special.

And it was all a lie.

Both this piece from The Huffington Post and this rather angry blog in The New York Times suggest individuals like me spend our lives correcting people.

First of all, I don’t need an oddly spelled name to correct people. I correct people well enough on my own, thank you very much.

And I am judicious about correcting misspellings of my name. It doesn’t matter if the barista spells my name wrong. But if the bank teller spells my name “Wendy,” the computer can’t find my account.

That Times blogger, by the way, seems to really hate people like my parents. He says parents shouldn’t saddle society with wacky names, which I don’t think is as bad as saddling society with, say, a serial killer, but you know the maxim about opinions.

He also says “Y’s and I’s are not interchangeable.” I don’t entirely agree. Merriam-Webster says “y” is a vowel when no other vowel rears its head in a word. Doesn’t that kind of mean you can trade not only an “i” for a “y” but a, e, o, and u as well?

And using an apostrophe before the “s” when pluralizing single letters is debatable. But then that blogger has written a book.

I haven’t.

The Huffington Post piece says people like me can grow into narcissists thanks to our curious names, so my correcting not only a published writer but people in general pretty much tracks.

But then there’s this piece from the BBC suggesting my narcissism might not be from my name but from being raised by people who would give me that name. I like placing the blame there a whole lot better.

The BBC and Huffington Post refer to research indicating people like me are more likely to drop out of school and have difficulty spelling. The Times blogger says we’re not special or creative.

So all a dime-a-dozen miscreant like me could do was confront my mom with the lie I’d been fed my whole life.

“It’s not good enough that I thought you were special?” my mom countered.

I’m not sure how her lie got me in trouble, but I guess I should be used to the anger. Apparently, society hates people like me.

Good thing, then, that I like me.