What's in a name?

Or a nickname??

Do you have nicknames for your children? Do you and your significant other have some sort of funny little name you call each other?

In our household we really don't have nicknames, per se for each other - and what we do have a tendency to call one another really aren't the kinds of names that I should post on my blog...if ya' know what I mean?

Growing up I didn't have any nicknames and neither did my sister or parents, for that matter. Oddly enough while my parents survived their teenage years flouncing around in poodle skirts and red tabbed Levis, both made it to their adult years, yet to having been called a Skip or a Buffy. (For this, we can be thankful! :))

Our parents simply called us by our first names; I definitely never called my sister, Sis or heaven forbid, Sissy (I can feel the squinty stare from my mother, even as I type that horrid word). I can most definitely assure you that our southerness style (not really the right use of adjectives, but it works for me) of raising would have not allowed for a Bubba in the family either! Even though Paula Dean has given a new sense of dignity to the use of Bubba, it still wouldn't have passed in our household.

All this time I never thought much about nicknames until I called Briley by her nickname last night and she looked at me with this cute little smile and asked me why I always called her 'Fred'?

Yes, it's true...I call her FRED! Well??? Tallulah just wasn't working for me, so Fred seemed to fit? I have no idea why, but I have always called her that - not so much as a direct address to her, it's more like if we are about to leave the house, I'll just simply ask her, "Ready to go Fred?"... she just usually ignores me and we go on about our way. Even when she and I are playing around or snuggling while watching TV, I still call her Fred. Hopefully I haven't scarred her too badly? Oh who am I kidding, that child is exposed to so many other things, I'm sure a harmless nickname will be the least of her worries when she needs therapy!

I was about 8 or 9 years old when I heard my dad referred to as something other than his proper name, David. My grandmother, his mother called him 'Dave'! GASP!!! I had never heard anyone ever call him anything other than David - that was his name - that's what my mom called him, that's what people at church called him... just David. Who was this 'Dave' persona? As time went along, I heard several other members of his own family refer to him as 'Dave'? What the heck?? What did this mean? Did his friends call him 'Dave'? Did it mean he was sorta hip, a cool guy, or have some sort of other personality than what I had known of him as 'daddy' or 'David'? Odd how your mind works when your 9 yrs old? Right?

Along this same time in my life, I discovered that maybe it wasn't quite the norm to have an Aunt BooBoo (short for Beulah)?!? Wait, it gets better!!! We had an Aunt Cap (I don't remember what her real name was), and Aunt Lonie {long o} As if LONIE wasn't bad enough, my grandmother and the other aunts called her DUCK??? Yes that's right - as in quack quack!!!

Didn't everyone have great aunts with these crazy names? On the other side of our family we had an Uncle Dude and an Aunt Punk, never thought anything was odd about this. Aunt Punk is still living and everybody calls her Punk! It's just her name...isn't it?? Oh, I realize she has a 'real' name, but it's just always going to be Aunt Punk to me.

So there you have it- I can't help my crazy randomness of calling Briley 'Fred', because it's just the way I am. So for as long as she continues to answer me, it's FRED!