You talkin' to ME?

I love the idea of nicknames. It allows your friends/family the opportunity to really beat your ass without actually touching you. No bruises or broken bones? No proof, fucker. By giving someone a nickname, you show them that you consider them. How you consider them is another story entirely.

My first nickname was ‘Bub’. My parents (father, specifically) called me that when I was a toe-headed tike. My brother got called that too, which made it cheap and confusing. My sister ended up with ‘Pumpkin’, or ‘Punkin’’. My niece inherited that nickname.

But I’m talking about ME here. ‘Bub’, specifically.

My brother soon decided it was time for me to have my own nickname. And with his deep knowledge of foreign language, his seven year-old mind made the hilarious connection: Craig –> Egg –> Juevos. And since ‘juevos’ also refer to testicles, my brother could not have been more pleased with himself. To this day, whenever I am at Fiesta and I wander by the chicken ovary section... I think of the unstoppable light emitting from my brother’s mug when he was told by someone that he was calling me ‘testicles’ in Spanish. I suppose we all have our moments of staggering glory. That was one of his.

From there, it was many years before anyone else bothered to label me anything other than ‘little shit’, ‘yard ape’, ‘mentally deficient’, ‘filthy’, or ‘goddammit boy’.

When I hit middle school, I got my first usable nickname. It was given to me by a girl named Kathlyne. I had a ridiculous and hopeless crush on her, which led me to write her pointless letters (folded into patterns and other busted-ass quasi-origami nonsense) which I intended as proof of my favor for her. It was all for not. I got a nickname instead of returned interest.

PC.

That’s what she called me. And I kept that nickname for years after that. My first DJ name was DJ PC. Wow. In the days of way-back.

But several others got thrown in there, just to spice it up. My seventh grade basketball team called me Benny Hill, as I was the chubbiest of the four white guys in attendance. I got called Casper a-lot too, as I am the whitest white boy to ever see sunlight.

High School brought a slew of nicknames, many of which I forget the origin.

Jimmy
McPimp
Craig McMuffin
C-Mack
Craig Mack
C-Note
C-Money
Dickless Wonder
Where’s my goddamn money bitch?
Here, hold this
Shhhh… this is OUR little secret

You know, the standard stuff.

But those are all on-the-spot nicknames, almost used out of convenience rather than inspiration. Some of my favorite nicknames are much better thought out, and none of them are mine.

Twelve Poke. This nickname was given to a friend of mine who, at some high school party (I met him long after high school), got piss drunk and convinced some girl to make out with him in a closet. When his friends finally opened the door, to answer the muffled shouts, they found him passed out on top of the girl who was wedged into a laundry hamper. The assumption being, he poked her twelve times and then passed out.

Hawk-Bo. He was a lanky, scrawny, brainy fellow with very few friends in middle school. The guy’s last name was Hawkins. Somehow or another, it got shortened to ‘Hawk’, and then some douche balloons thought it would be uber-ironic to make him a super hero. So they would call him up, sing the stupid name to him as if it were the arrival of some DC Comics character, and hang up. I liked it because they built a story around the thing. Other than that, it kinda sucks, I guess.

Brother Nick. I don’t know where the ‘Brother’ part came from. I don’t know who decided on it. But what makes this one so great, is that while we were working together after college, our boss actually started to refer to Nick as “Brother Nick”. It was as if the nickname had been officially validated. You can’t fuck with that.

I love nicknames. Let’s hear some nicknames!