So the wife has taken to calling Shiloh, Ma. As in, "how you doing Ma", or "what time did Ma get up?". I for one, refuse to call her that. I'm just not crazy about Ma as a nickname for my daughter. My little cutesy name, Girlie Girl is something that is reserved for just me and her, hasn't seemed to have caught on with anyone else. I remember always wishing I had a cool nickname when I was in high school. This was after Dr. J came on the scene and I thought that was one of the best nicknames ever. Back then you had the Iceman, The Wizard, The Hawk, Zeke from Cabin Creek, et al. My college teammate, Raymond Townsend, thought I sounded like Bill Dee in the movie Brian's Song. So he started calling me Magic, which I nixed right off the bat. What kind of nickname is that for a basketball player anyway? I liked the moniker, Maestro, but no one else did. My rookie year in the NBA, the PR guy tried to hang "The Slammer" on me, because of my dunking tendencies. I told him that it reminded me too much of jail, and to please discontinue it. He did.
Why is it so commonplace to give nicknames to our kids? There must some kind of emotional investment in it for the bestowers. Something that maybe intensifies the connect bewteen adult and child. The problem arises when the adult pins one on a kid and it sticks, like Doo Doo Boy. A kid in Louisville was actually called that into his teenage years. Imagine walking around the rest of your life and that is what people remember you by. Hey, aren't you Doo Doo Boy? Or the one a family friend tried to paste on my son. She started calling him Bug. Boy am so I glad that didn't have much staying power. If only I should be so lucky with Ma...
