Nicknames

Growing up I have had a variety of nicknames. Some have come and gone, some are just associated with certain people, and some are the ones that seem to stick around forever no matter how much time passes. And then, of course, you have the universal nicknames of just shortening someones real name. Such as Austin to Aus and Christopher to Chris and Jessica to Jess and Brittney to Britt. For some reason when we start to become friends with someone it seems easier to shorten their name to just one syllable. I always felt bad for the people whose name was already one syllable. After all, you can't really shorten Ann to A.

My first nickname was probably "boo". When I was little I always remember being called Brittney Boo or just boo boo. IT is a name that I have always been called by my mom and dad. No one else calls me it, just them. And it is something that they still call me to this day.

Throughout the years growing up I became the victim of many nicknames. As a little girl my Uncle Cory would call me Gummie Bear, no, he doesn't anymore. Once I started playing baseball I always seemed to get called Walker and then somehow it got changed to Walkerkins. In Jr. High my friend and I liked a show on cartoon network and started calling each other the names, I was Bubbles. Then I had a friend who wanted me to have a middle name so she said it was Marie so that my initials would then be BMW. I had another friend who wanted me to have a different middle name so she said it was Jane so that she could then call be BJ. In High school my cousins and I thought it would be fun if we started saying things backwards. That was when I became Yenttirb. Some names are really cool backwards like Mackay becomes Yakcam and Wendi becomes Idnew. There was a time when I went bowling every Wednesday night with a friend and we decided that we needed bowling names. She became Groovy and I became Lucky. All of these nicknames have come and gone. On occasion someone will still call me one of them, but not very often.

And then there was this one night. A night involving three girls, dancing, Dr. Pepper, a camera, the Notebook movie, a sleepover, and no sleep. A night that we were all sure we would forget about and a night where we were sure the nicknames wouldn't be remembered and would never stick. But guess what...they were not forgotten and they have stuck ever since.

This particular night happened about six years ago. Brett, Wendi and I had all decided to get together and have a sleepover. We started the night off by going dancing at Trolley Square (this would be the old Studio 600). After a few hours of jumping around and singing along to songs we left and headed back to Brett's. Of course along the way we stopped and got huge Dr. Peppers from Taco Bell. Once back at Brett's house the night continued with movies, junk food, disposable camera's, and lots of laughter. Somewhere in the middle of it all and probably at about 3 in the morning, we started thinking about initials and what sounds the letters of our initials make. Don't ask me why, because in all honesty I really don't know. We started with Wendi's name. Her initials are W and then L. Somehow we just started calling her WL. Not very creative, but that's how it goes. Brett was next with the initials B and A. Now imagine three girls hyper beyond belief and very sleep deprived making the sounds of these letters and trying to put them together to make sense. Highly entertaining. And in all of our Letter sound making Brett became BaHa. That left me. Now since I don't have a middle name that also means I have no middle initial. Brett and Wendi were trying to come up with something that started with B. They went through a variety of things and somewhere along the way Wendi shouted out Sting. There was then this Ahah moment from Brett and all of a sudden I became B-Sting. We all started laughing at our new names for each other and kept calling each other by them the rest of the night. When we finally decided that we should go to bed and laid so when we were all sure that A) most of the laughable moments of the night would not be remembered, including the nicknames. and B) if the nicknames were remembered they would never stick and we would never use them.

Well, the next morning came bright and early. We all got up and got ready for the day. When it was time for Wendi and I to leave we all just looked at each other and started laughing. At that moment we knew that all nicknames had been remembered and that they would from that moment on be what we refereed to each other as. And they have continued to stick ever since that eventful night. Isn't great to have friends you can be that close with.