Nicknames

As I've never had a real live nickname (one that was used with any regularity), I'm sort of jealous of people who have them. My name doesn't lend itself well to attractive sounding abbreviations, although some of my friends call me by my first initial, which I think is nice. Anyway, lately I've had a plethora of teasing nicknames.

It really all started with being called Buttercup with a Southern accent. This is due to that fact that I take Christ's command to "go to the highways and the byways and compel them to come in" to mean, "go to the highways and the byways and compel them to be friends with you." Meaning the limo driver. Anyway, there is a much longer story hear, but it just isn't the appropriate time.

This past weekend, when I was in the great state of Michigan, which is full of lovely lakes and lots of rural-ness, at the ancestral home of one of the forefathers of...(anyway, this story is getting long, too. But he did love Eliot and had a Christmas card from Eliot hanging on the wall!), I got two new nicknames, "Pyranha," for my cigarette-smoking abilities, and "anti-Calvinist bigot," a name that I sort of embrace.

On the flight home, the woman beside me, a lady with enviably white hair, said, "You have the sweetest face? Are you as sweet as your face?" Alas, as she was a woman and not a man, I couldn't use the tried and true, "Are you proposing?" to diffuse the awkwardness (I mean, really, what can you say? "I appear sweet; deep down I'm a very critical person"? A truly sweet person would never admit it. And so I didn't and quickly changed the subject.) All that to say, with nicknames like Pyranha and anti-Calvinist bigot (I wonder if I did go over the top with my anti-Calvinist assertions?!), I really think that my face and personality may be rather divergent. Alas if I go to heaven and my personality informs my face...