11/24/03’s illustrious band:

Ebenezer Julius Caesar Percival Wheezer Scrooge

Brought to you by the Chicken Step Lady’s dad. Once upon a time, CSL’s father named a cat Ebenezer Julius Caesar Percival Wheezer Scrooge. Since that was too long a name to spit out with any frequency, he gave the cat a nickname: Sister. The fact that Sister was a tomcat made no difference.

This story led to a further discussion of unlikely nicknames -- of people, not pets. CSL’s dad had a nickname for her, too: Good Ol’ South Dakota. He had given her a different moniker that had initials of S.D., which is also the abbreviation for South Dakota, so naturally he started calling her that instead.

My own dad knew a guy who asked people to call him George because Oscar sounded funny (or was it the other way around?). And I knew a guy who went by his middle name, Lynn, throughout his teens, but decided in his twenties that he wanted to go by his first name, Bruce, because it sounded tougher.

One woman in this conversation had been known as Myrna all through high school, for reasons she never discovered, even though her name is Mary. Another participant knew a guy who had been called by his father’s name during his school days, even though he was not a Junior. When an old classmate phoned his house years later asking for “Jake,” the man’s son said there was no one there by that name and hung up.

Similarly, I grew up with a guy who was Butch up until he graduated from college and moved away from all the people who called him that. (His father, too, had been Butch in his youth but, when he moved into professional life, started introducing himself by his real name.) When people ask me whether I went to school with Tom So-and-so, I have to think hard before answering.

Then there’s The Other Amy, who gained her nickname in adulthood. Her husband Tim is known to his family as Mim-do (sort of like Scooby Doo?). When she married into the family, she became Amy-do. I practice T’ai Chi with a guy known in the studio as Woody and in the rest of the world as Mark. And of course there’s Skeeter, who was plain old Justin until his coworkers discovered he could hear sounds usually detectable only to mosquitoes.

And don’t even get me started on Mike the math guy. He’s been known, at various times, as Tiberius Rand, Spiny Blowfish, Harry, Freighter Shin and Reasonably Hairy Shin, among other things. The man has as many names as stages of life, all of them interesting.

The Media family is by no means immune to the nicknaming bug. Sometimes we’re self-naming. When I was three or four years old and fascinated by firefighters, I insisted upon being referred to as Freddie the Fireman whenever I wore my red plastic fire hat. If I was wearing a different hat, however, I was Joe the Plumber. There are still people in my hometown, ladies of a certain age, who call me Freddie when they see me downtown. My Dad called me Sport sometimes, and called both Sister-san and me Bob.

During junior high, Sister-san was called Max, our grandfather’s name, for a while. I can’t remember the reasoning behind that one, but it made sense at the time. A certain parent of ours is still sometimes called Corn by her siblings. And many, many more.

So. Who are you really?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

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