A Writer's Journey Part XVI

Title: A Writer’s Journey

Part XVI

Nicknames.  When they were younger, I gave my children a lot of nicknames!  The big nickname for Matthew was “Tiger” and I would often whisper to him, “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night....”  Matt was also “Skater Boy”, “Skate Dog,” and “Mr. Woozle” but “Tiger” was what I called him the most.  Autumn’s primary nickname is the “Bear” and I used to cry out to her, “Ho the Bear!”  As she got older and we spent hours together in track and field I would call her “Bobo the Circus Bear!” at times.  Her other nicknames are “Ninja girl,” “the Jagular,” and “the Arrow.”  Leland’s nickname used to be “Buddy” and although we still call him that he seems to have outgrown it in some ways.  He also outgrew, “Wee one,” for some reason:)  When he was little I would randomly yell out in a high pitched voice, “Everyone loves the Wee One!!”  One of the last times I did that he was an “older” elementary aged student and he growled, “Dad, not everybody loves me!!”  Of all my kids I am most likely to call Leland by his actual name.  I have also called him, “Ninja Boy,” “the grab-me-gottcha,” and “Bert eyes.”  Adrianna got the mother lode of nicknames!  It all started out innocently enough with “Puffalump” based on a stuffed animal that was her security blanket as a two-year old.  That got shortened to Puffy and then Puff.  Although this is Puff’s primary nickname, a cascade of nicknames followed.  Where Matt is most often referred to as “Tiger” and Autumn “The Bear”, Adrianna has so many I use them for different situations.  Here are a few.... When Adrianna’s angry “Huffy Puffy!”  When she is being cute “Powder Puffy!”  When she is excited, “Pom pom girl!”  When we are on a boat, “Captain Poofy!” (said like a sea dog:)  “It’s the whatta, whatta, whatta girl!” um... long story!  She’s been a pokemon “Jiggly Puffy” and a pooh bear villain, “Heffalumpy!!”  She also is the “lawyer,” “the Mob,” and well... it goes on!!  There are like seriously fifty!  We actually listed them one time and it was dizzying to say the least.  Some are from her friends but most are from me.  My default nickname for her is “Puffy”. 

Over the years I have nicknamed many of my athletes too.  Courtney Cornell was the first to get a nickname and she ended up with several but “Court” was my default nickname for her.  She was the only one on our team that wore a watch and I was always asking her for the time.  So I started yelling out grandly, “Keeper of the Time, what time is it?”  Everyone remembers Court’s “Keeper of the Time” nickname.  She won so many races we also called her, “The Queen of the Court.”  She won so many sectional patches between track and XC I also called her “patches” occasionally.  I usually always used Brandon’s name or would occasionally call him Marlatt but his nickname came from the paper.  Back then I would rush to get the paper first thing in the morning and see if we were in it!  One time they called Brandon, “Brent Marlass!”  Brandon was quite put out about that muff up!!  After that, one of us would say, “That Brent Marlass kid on JT is amazing!   They’ve got some other kid... Brandon something?  I don’t think he’s as good as Brent!”  Brandon would always smile.  I called Chris “Hadley” and yet Doug was usually Doug (occasionally Stuts).  Why?  I have no idea!  Jay Dreher got to keep his name but he got a catch phrase.  I would smile at him and say, “Hey, Jay!  What do you say?”  Sometimes I would just shorten someone’s name like “Brittany” became, “Brit.”  I occasionally called her “Sidney Bristol,” and she would always give me a confused look when I did.

The nicknames didn’t stop with generation one.  Brian Allington was “Bry”, his sister Laureena became “The Captain” even before she became a team Captain!  I have no idea where I pulled that one from!  She got a catch phrase too!  I would chant, “Go LaurEENa, go, go LaurEENa!” as she ran by.  Adam Hadley was “Captain Ahab” which I think a friend gave him and I latched onto.  Brandon Owen was “O”.  Sometimes I would shorten an athlete’s last name like McKenzie Prutsman I called “Pruts” and Deven Brutsman I called, “Bruts.”  Katie Wyant always got a respectful, “Miss Wyant” from me and although I will use players last names like that, it was generally how I referred to her... yet her sister got “Meg”.  Some players want me to nickname them but I tell them, “It just happens.  If I try and do it, it will seem forced... fake.”  Sadie was morphed into “SSSSSSSadie” and Sara was like her twin so I called her the “SSSSSSSister!”

Many nicknames are generated on the spur of the moment randomly and some have a story.  This year Cash had a wicked cough in her early XC meets.  When we went to Addison, she was coughing so bad I was sure her lungs were going to come out, and she kind of needs those!  I started calling her, “Plague Victim.”  (The cool thing was she still won!)  It stuck.  My daughter Autumn heard about this and indignantly said, “If Cash is the Plague Victim then I’m Patient Zero!”  She is referring to when in ninth grade I made her compete in the county and sectional meet sicker than a dog.  It was so bad that she vomited in the middle of shot put.  Yet she PR’d in pole vault that night.  It was her last event.  I told her, “Sweet heart, I know you’re sick.  When you are off the runway you can be as sick as you want but on that runway switch gears and pretend like you are healthy.  Autumn went over 7’6” that night and came in second in an exciting pole vault battle with a rival from AA that she would clash with over the years. 

What is really cool is my daughter Adrianna nicknamed one of my athletes years before she came to run for me.  When Lauren Ross was in Awana, she wore the color Pink often, leading my daughter to call her, “Pink.”  I called Lauren that for years in Awana too.  Our school AD couldn’t figure out for a little who “Pink” was on our team at first, because we will use that as her default name! 

My favorite nickname for a player was the one I gave Vanessa Helgeland.  One day in ninth grade track I said, “My friend Vanessa!”  She growled back, “Coach, we are NOT friends!!”  I kept it up and was shot down the rest of ninth grade.  In tenth grade when I said, “My friend Vanessa,” she smiled a little and said slyly, “Coach, we’re not really friends... more like distant acquaintances!”  I loved it!  Whenever I brought it up that year, that was the response I got.  Her junior year I said, “My friend Vanessa,” and she just smiled.  So I started telling her two friends Meg and Alyssa, “Really I’m only your friends because you are Vanessa’s friends.  You guys are more like a friend of a friend.”  Meg pretended to be affronted and Alyssa smirked at me.    The year after Vanessa graduated I told the team, “My only friend is gone!”  It became a huge joke at practice that I was now friendless.

There are so many more nicknames!  “Jane from the Ukraine!”  “BBBBBBRUCE!!”  “Megan” to Meg Rogers, which made her eyes slit dangerously the first time I used it.  “Coach, you know my real name is Margret right?”  “Yes,” I replied, with an impish grin.  Oh, so many more!  One of my favorites is that I will refer to even former team captains with their honorific title “Captain” at times.  Titles, nicknames, and last names are important.  They represent who we are... sometimes even what we are.  I am Coach to some, Pastor to others, and Ade to family and close friends.  But my newest title is “author.”  Do I deserve it?  That is an excellent question.  In a practical sense, yes, because I have written many books... some very large:)  But longing for the honorific is kind of like the kids that wanted me to nickname them out of the blue.  “I can’t,” I told them honestly.  I’ve always liked my first name “Adrian” because it is so rare for a guy or “A” as Mark Decker and Mr. Davis have called me.  To some though I am an “author.”  There is a boy (now probably a man) in Florida who has never met me but has read several of my books.  I am most certainly “Author Adrian Essigmann” to him.  Others are big fans of my writing like Jillian, Sam, and Rachel but know me primarily as “Coach”.   I used to crave the title and now I realize a title more describes what people think of you, how they relate to you.  What does it matter how many books I’ve written.  That is meaningless.  What matters is have any of them impacted you?  Has this blog impacted you?  Now that matters!

Some day I hope to be talking to some strangers and in the course of the conversation find out they like one of my books.  I will get a fiendish thrill if they can’t remember the author’s name.  “He has a weird last name...” and then “I’m not even sure if he’s a guy or a girl.  But I really liked ‘American Fairytale’ or ‘Wolf Hunting’ or ‘An Assumed Risk.’”  Will I tell them I’m the author if that happens?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if that will matter because that is what I will be in that moment:) 

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book of the Week – Wolf Hunting!! ($.99 on Kindle!)

“Ariel Wilson, ‘Jack’ to her friends, has a mother determined to make her a superstar. During the school year, she is in lessons, classes, and sports, but she never wins...at least at anything her mom cares about. During the summer, Ariel becomes “Little Wolf”, living with her father just as Native Americans did centuries ago. Then Ariel gets kidnapped by a group of men who want to blackmail her mother. These men are professional kidnappers who have abducted dangerous men before, so they’re not worried about some rich teenage girl. They should be, though, because they haven’t kidnapped a girl... they’ve got a wolf!”