At our house evolution is alive and well in the form of the names we call each other. If my poor kids ever have to fill out a background check and list all the names they've been known by, they'll need an extra sheet.
Corie quickly became Corie Bug because she was such a cute little bug of a baby. But "Bug" lasted as she grew, and was cemented when she got a VW Bug in high school. So even to this day, Jim refers to her as Bug, or The Bug -- "Who was on the phone? The Bug?"
Dave began as David, which isn't at all unusual, and is sometimes Davey. Still fairly normal. But after a short stint as Bear, Bearky, Rarekin Bearkin, and Beark, he ventured into a rhyming name groove with Dave the Snave, Snavey Davey, Snavely, and just plain Snave.
In the case of Dan, my middle child, it started when we inflicted upon him the curse of going by his middle name. I use my middle name, and so do my brother, my sister, and my dad. So you think I'd have known better. We began innocently enough, when James Daniel became Danny and then Dan. Soon it was Dan the Man, which Jim shortened to DTM. DTM is such a mouthful, though, so before long that had been shortened to just DT, which seemed to stick. Around the house it was all right, and didn't sound too bizarre when I'd shout at football games, "GO DT!!!" Until someone would ask what his middle name was. "Oh, it's Daniel." "????....So what's the T for?" "Ummm......'the' ........"
Garrison, my fourth, has a name that doesn't lend itself well to being shortened, so when he was little and cute, we started calling him Gair Bear, which morphed into Gairby or Gairbin, which soon became Gairbs. Lately, in an attempt to call him something more grown-up (really, what almost-16-year-old boy wants his mom to call him Gairbs??) we've been referring to him as GR, and his nieces and nephew call him G, short for Uncle G.
But I think Susannah has endured the most inexplicable array of monikers. Of course the normal shortenings of Susie, Sue, and Suse all occurred and are used with frequency. But then she started being Pooz and Poozer, and The Pooz. Dan called her Junior for a spell. Jim started calling her Buggy - a throwback to his days with our first daughter -- and that soon became Bucky. That was when Garrison jumped in and made it BuckWheat. Sometimes she's RuckBuck and occasionally RuckBack, but most recently it's been WheatPack. She accepts all of these with grace, and only ever bristles if Garrison tries to call her Susan.
So now you know. I've heard that your name is crucial to your self-esteem. If my children suffer from identity issues, who could blame them?
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3 comments:
I loved this! So funny. Very Life Among the Savages. Even though I knew all the elements of it, it still made me laugh out loud. See, you're clever because you can even catch me when I know how the story ends!
Thank you for leaving out Dodo!
We have a Jojo, Bobo, KK and Boo around here. Zach endures the most as he is accosted with Zach a Boo and Zacharoni and Cheese. He doesn't care for that one very much.
It's probably a sad testament to my misplaced maternal instincts to say that I have gone through the same evolution with all of my furry critters and all of Garan's too. We just had an interesting merger of the two.
The boys started out as puppamooses, kind of like the canine version of a papoose. Garan's dogs became dogamooses. Garan, who was previously G or Daddy G then because Gmoose or Daddamoose, and I became Lynnamoose or Mamamoose (when talking to the dogs about me), which is now started becoming Moosiemoose or Moosie for short.
Other highlights are--
Demo: DemOAF the Long Tongue (his viking name)
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