Earn your nickname
• I knew a guy back in the old neighborhood who would literally hump a tree to get his jollies. His name was Bruce and that’s what we called him.
• There was a guy who got into roughly five fights each month for ten years straight and lost every single one of them, including a handful against girls. His name was Ricky and we called him Ricky.
• There was the dude who could not go a single night without setting something on fire. Empty beer six packs, dry leaves, stacks of newspapers, his own hair, etc. If it was at all willing to accept flame, he would light it on fire. Scott, his name was. That’s the only name he ever had.
• We hung around a bit with a fat kid who, when he lost his temper, would bite his lower lip, squeeze his eyes shut and then start hitting people at random. Ronnie. No nickname.
• The girl who used peanut butter as sexual lubrication was known to us only as Laurie.
• The fellow who contracted head lice not one summer but three was just Keith.
• Our neighborhood stutterer was Tony
• The biggest guy we knew – big as a cow, really – was Amos.
Why is it that the people who really earn a nickname never get one while perfectly ordinary Joes get slapped with colorful appellations based on nothing? In the order they were listed, the above characters should have been doomed to live their lives addressed thusly: Splinter, KO, Zippo, Curly Joe, Jiffy Lube, Scratch, Skip and Bovine.
Your host Zit has spoken.
May 16th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I bet you have lots of nicknames Flammer! (ohhh, there’s one now!)
May 16th, 2009 at 10:34 am
there was a guy at my high school we called suds because rumor had it he had to go to the hospital once after getting a bar bottle stuck in his ass. probably not true but the name stuck. (get it? stuck?)
May 16th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I’ll forever be remembered as “Red” in my hometown
May 16th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Zit? Ha! No need for explanation.
My sister and brother in-law have called me Sheila Babe for years. Strange, but true.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Growing up we had a “Cricket”, not sure where that came from. We had Booger Brown. Don’t wanna know where that came from, and seeing as how he was the baddest mofo in our school, no one asked. We had Tripp(Lyle)(spelled with two T’s, named after his pet turtle by his parents, you figure it out). We had Gluehead, because he was so fucking stupid. I taught him how to run a beeswax seam on carpet. When he did it he had his nose about 1/4 inch from the glue, and the name stuck. My older sister was, and still is, the wiener. I couldn’t pronounce her name (Selena), and it came out sounding like wiener. She still hates it, I still call her that. Her kids still laugh. (these are the same kids who took pictures of their mother working in the yard so they could show people the Mexican who does their landscaping – They are funny).
May 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
HA! Gil, funny kids. Sounds like something my siblings and I would have done to our mother. Thank God she had a sense of humor.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Mark! I’m shocked that you forgot Booger! (Eric was his real name) I could go on with a few more, but they may read this for all I know!
May 25th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
I used to really want a nickname… until someone told me that rarely are girls’ nicknames ever good. At least boy nicknames have the potential of being funny in a general way but the gals, eh, not so much. I’ve since given up my nickname dream.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
never had a nickname in my life. Bulldog’s been my name foreva