Saturday, July 19, 2003
Because one is my name. The other is not.
When we were kids, they called Chris Donut. It's a last name thing. And after a while, they started calling Jeff Timbit -- because he was Chris's little brother, geddit? Before too long, someone posited the name Jellyroll for me, but I put a stop to that pretty quick. Bad enough to be the pudgy sister of two skinny boys, bad enough to have no front teeth -- tragically lost in the Evil Kneival episode of 1973, tell you about it another time. Bad enough to have the same Italian Junior Mafia haircut as my brothers, administered by my Italian but decidedly non-Mafioso -- as far as I know, anyhow -- barber grandfather. But to be called Jellyroll on top of it? No. Absolutely not.
Of course, I wanted a nickname. Who didn't? But I wanted it to be a flattering one, appended out of extreme admiration without so much as a whiff of derision. Yeah, right, kid. You don't get to choose. And I'm not the sort who nicknames easy. To wit: it was almost 20 years before I got another, especially if we don't count my mother's affectionate Stephanina Ballerina, which we most certainly do not. Though it is cute. But not for public consumption. Of course, I've just told you, which isn't perfect, but I'm going to trust I'm among friends here.
So, skip ahead from the mid-seventies to the early nineties. I am a waiter in an extremely poncey cafe, the kind of place people flocked to in Toronto in the early nineties to drink cappuccinos and what were then commonly called cafe au lait -- that's latte to you -- and to be roundly and soundly abused by the staff, and to eat eggplant and sundried tomatoes and the like. Yeah. You know the place. Black tables, black floors, black chairs, black everything. Black-hearted waitstaff. Anyhow. So there I am, waiting on tables. There's another woman who works there, shares my name. There's some talk of differentiating us by calling me Number Two, but as with Jellyroll, I nip it in the bud. No WAY I'm answering to a number. Waiting on tables is dehumanising enough most nights. Anyhow. One night, I'm working with Vacation Boy. The sous-chef had just seen Streetcar Named Desire. She'd ring the little kitchen bell and yell, Blanche, order up. That was Vacation Boy's cue. For my orders, same deal, but she'd yell Stellah. Well, Blanche didn't stick to VB, but Stellah sure stuck to me. There're probably still people, men especially, of a certain age in Toronto who have no idea Stellah isn't my real name. Anyhow. Haven't had a nickname since. Except maybe Dude, and that's not so much a name as it is a way of life.
I've given out more than a few nicknames, however. Lately, I've been using Peach Pie and Sweet Potato as terms of endearment. The nieces have it down pat. I called Vero Sweet Potato one day and she looked at me as seriously as only a truly brilliant three-year-old can and said, I'm not Sweet Potato. I'm Peach Pie! Indeed, I said, you're right. You are Peach Pie. It's your sister who's Sweet Potato. Of course, what she doesn't know is that I call her Duwallida behind her back, which was her sister Sofia's baby-pronunciation of Veronica. She called herself Dopia in those days, Sofia did. Hard to take the kid seriously, trust me.
Donna has long been Rutabaga at my hands, or Roo for short, which morphed into Ragu at Jeff's hands, who is himself widely known as Shwarma or Chicken or Chicken Shwarma. No one calls him Timbit anymore. That I know of, anyhow.
The name of which I'm most proud has to be Kravitz, which is short for Dudey Kravitz, which is Kravitz's culturally appropriate dude nickname. You see what I mean about the way of life thing. Anyhow, she answers to it, almost exclusively. Sometimes I forget what she's really called, and that people don't necessarily know it's not her real name. Heh.
The Paramour is looking for a new handle. He emailed me last week. So I guess I'm the Paramour? was the content of the note. We had a chat about it afterward. He's not crazy about it. And though you generally don't get to pick your nickname -- unless you're really adamant, like me, and that was just getting out of a nickname I didn't want, rather than insisting that people start calling me Big Rigger or some nonsense as one of Kravitz's acquaintances once did. Anyhow. The Paramour. He wanted something different, and I had to admit I'd been pressed for time and inspiration. And so I opened it up for discussion. I should just call you Trouble, I said, because that's exactly what you are. A Troublemaker. The Troublemaker. We tried out Bad Influence, too, but it didn't take. Evil came up once or twice that night, which finally morphed to Satan, but I think that's neither strictly accurate nor particularly fresh. Not that The Troublemaker has never been thought of before, but it has a certain jaunty appeal, I think. So The Troublemaker it is. Trouble for short. It's cool. It'll do for now. If he sticks around, many, many more nicknames will accrue, I'm sure.
For instance, for a long while, and occasionally still now, I called Tombag Fantasy Plans, after his tricky habit of thinking he's made plans with people when in fact he has only in his mind. The name didn't come up till we'd been friends for five or six years, but sometimes they take a while to brew. So when my own true nickname finally does bubble up, after thirty-some-odd years, it's bound to be a peach.
When we were kids, they called Chris Donut. It's a last name thing. And after a while, they started calling Jeff Timbit -- because he was Chris's little brother, geddit? Before too long, someone posited the name Jellyroll for me, but I put a stop to that pretty quick. Bad enough to be the pudgy sister of two skinny boys, bad enough to have no front teeth -- tragically lost in the Evil Kneival episode of 1973, tell you about it another time. Bad enough to have the same Italian Junior Mafia haircut as my brothers, administered by my Italian but decidedly non-Mafioso -- as far as I know, anyhow -- barber grandfather. But to be called Jellyroll on top of it? No. Absolutely not.
Of course, I wanted a nickname. Who didn't? But I wanted it to be a flattering one, appended out of extreme admiration without so much as a whiff of derision. Yeah, right, kid. You don't get to choose. And I'm not the sort who nicknames easy. To wit: it was almost 20 years before I got another, especially if we don't count my mother's affectionate Stephanina Ballerina, which we most certainly do not. Though it is cute. But not for public consumption. Of course, I've just told you, which isn't perfect, but I'm going to trust I'm among friends here.
So, skip ahead from the mid-seventies to the early nineties. I am a waiter in an extremely poncey cafe, the kind of place people flocked to in Toronto in the early nineties to drink cappuccinos and what were then commonly called cafe au lait -- that's latte to you -- and to be roundly and soundly abused by the staff, and to eat eggplant and sundried tomatoes and the like. Yeah. You know the place. Black tables, black floors, black chairs, black everything. Black-hearted waitstaff. Anyhow. So there I am, waiting on tables. There's another woman who works there, shares my name. There's some talk of differentiating us by calling me Number Two, but as with Jellyroll, I nip it in the bud. No WAY I'm answering to a number. Waiting on tables is dehumanising enough most nights. Anyhow. One night, I'm working with Vacation Boy. The sous-chef had just seen Streetcar Named Desire. She'd ring the little kitchen bell and yell, Blanche, order up. That was Vacation Boy's cue. For my orders, same deal, but she'd yell Stellah. Well, Blanche didn't stick to VB, but Stellah sure stuck to me. There're probably still people, men especially, of a certain age in Toronto who have no idea Stellah isn't my real name. Anyhow. Haven't had a nickname since. Except maybe Dude, and that's not so much a name as it is a way of life.
I've given out more than a few nicknames, however. Lately, I've been using Peach Pie and Sweet Potato as terms of endearment. The nieces have it down pat. I called Vero Sweet Potato one day and she looked at me as seriously as only a truly brilliant three-year-old can and said, I'm not Sweet Potato. I'm Peach Pie! Indeed, I said, you're right. You are Peach Pie. It's your sister who's Sweet Potato. Of course, what she doesn't know is that I call her Duwallida behind her back, which was her sister Sofia's baby-pronunciation of Veronica. She called herself Dopia in those days, Sofia did. Hard to take the kid seriously, trust me.
Donna has long been Rutabaga at my hands, or Roo for short, which morphed into Ragu at Jeff's hands, who is himself widely known as Shwarma or Chicken or Chicken Shwarma. No one calls him Timbit anymore. That I know of, anyhow.
The name of which I'm most proud has to be Kravitz, which is short for Dudey Kravitz, which is Kravitz's culturally appropriate dude nickname. You see what I mean about the way of life thing. Anyhow, she answers to it, almost exclusively. Sometimes I forget what she's really called, and that people don't necessarily know it's not her real name. Heh.
The Paramour is looking for a new handle. He emailed me last week. So I guess I'm the Paramour? was the content of the note. We had a chat about it afterward. He's not crazy about it. And though you generally don't get to pick your nickname -- unless you're really adamant, like me, and that was just getting out of a nickname I didn't want, rather than insisting that people start calling me Big Rigger or some nonsense as one of Kravitz's acquaintances once did. Anyhow. The Paramour. He wanted something different, and I had to admit I'd been pressed for time and inspiration. And so I opened it up for discussion. I should just call you Trouble, I said, because that's exactly what you are. A Troublemaker. The Troublemaker. We tried out Bad Influence, too, but it didn't take. Evil came up once or twice that night, which finally morphed to Satan, but I think that's neither strictly accurate nor particularly fresh. Not that The Troublemaker has never been thought of before, but it has a certain jaunty appeal, I think. So The Troublemaker it is. Trouble for short. It's cool. It'll do for now. If he sticks around, many, many more nicknames will accrue, I'm sure.
For instance, for a long while, and occasionally still now, I called Tombag Fantasy Plans, after his tricky habit of thinking he's made plans with people when in fact he has only in his mind. The name didn't come up till we'd been friends for five or six years, but sometimes they take a while to brew. So when my own true nickname finally does bubble up, after thirty-some-odd years, it's bound to be a peach.
