SHA-ZAMS!

I just remembered this from oh, let's say roughly 2 decades ago back in ABQ:

My sister and I used beg to go to this one store every time we got our allowance. We called it SHA-ZAMS! The sign clearly read "Chesam's" CHE-SAMS, but to us, that spelled SHA-ZAMS! They had all the coolest stickers and stuffed animals. I remember saving up 3 or 4 allowances once to buy this stuffed UNICORN. It had this shimmery material for it's horn and long soft white "hair" for it's mane and tail. Anyhow, for years we were wild for SHA-ZAMS! and one day I ask my friend if she'd ever been (I believe we were trading our wildest sticker-hunting stories). She had never heard of SHA-ZAMS! but when I described how you get there she politely asked "Oh, is it anywhere near Chesam's?" At that point, the universe shifted just a tiny bit into alignment and I saw, with horror, that OF COURSE "Chesam's" would be pronounced "Chesam's" and not "SHA-ZAMS!" and with embarrassment (and very likely beet red cheeks) I stammered something about how it was a joke in our family to call it SHA-ZAMS, of course I KNOW it's really pronounced Chesam's...

I am sure there's a story there. Maybe it involved a little girl just learning to read who sounded out a fantastical name from an average shop sign - and maybe her mom and/or dad thought it was cute and never corrected her or her sister, who grew up seeing a sign that read Chesam's, but knowing in their hearts it was SHA-ZAMS! The funny thing: after I realized SHA-ZAMS! was really Chesam's, it lost some of its luster for me. Maybe I was growing out of the sticker/stuffed unicorn phase (and this would have been not a nanosecond too soon), but there was something magical about an average little shop, sitting on an average little street, with a larger than life, no-holds-barred, "this is a place for YOU, little girls who still believe that the place you go car-camping at every summer is the fairy forest because you've seen the evidence of fairy rings left in the morning dew" name.