Wednesday, August 15, 2007

What's in a Name?



Ever notice how when someone or something is a little different there's always someone right there to point it out? I was guilty of it as a youngster and am now embarassed about it -- you know "fat","too tall", "chicken legs" etc. All the things that would hurt. We never stopped to think about that.

Nicknames tend to stay around overtime - hunch, polecat, fly, boner, thumper, bones, the stain, hoss, ...... I know you can think of more. My first real girlfriend had "buck" teeth, so alot of people called her 'Bucky". She was a really nice kid, quiet, smart and funny. I stopped going out with her because "my friends" told me that I could do better. Isn't that a sad thing to admit?

Some nicknames are funny and some people accept them. My brother in law has a friend with a peanut sized mole on his forehead, so they call him "Goob", short for "Goober." I was sometimes miserable, so I got tagged with "Grumpy." One little skinny woman that I used to work with was called "Double D" because it seemed like she was always holding a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. My all time favorite moniker is "Pukey". A kid gets sick in class once and he's marked for life.

The cigar shop had some characters - Larry the Fenceman, Dr. Fred also known as the Wizard, Black Jamaican Larry, Johnny O, John the Heat, Big Waz and Little Waz, Murph, Spooky, Mini,
Iggy, Tony Pizza, Sweaty and the Hurricane.

Since we're all older now let's try to be a little kinder - "Honey could you stop calling me ............."

1 comment:

Nick Marino said...

Some of the characters I deal with in Brooklyn; Stumpy ( 1/2 a leg ); Oompah ( she played the tuba in school ); Big Tony meat sauce ( puts sauce on everything ); Marky "no nose" ( plastic nose ) ; Three fingers Al ( missing two from an industrial accident ); Cyclops ( a mole on his forehead that looks like an eye ); Jimmy stringbeans ( 6' 4' 145 lbs. always in green ); and Johnny Flaps,( McDonalds pancakes every morning ). It never ends. Just ask my BIG sister ( proboscus ).!

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