“You're smart. I like you. I'll probably give you a nickname.”

Of my many experiences and observations this weekend, the subject of nicknames was one that while of brief occurrence, I have thought about a bit. Nicknames are such an oddity, because they can become so engrained and characteristic of an individual that the very name becomes a dimension and component to the person. It’s fascinating to see the way with which nicknames are introduced and perpetuated. And perhaps most difficult is that you can’t choose your own nickname…it will never catch on and always seems artificial. I believe there was a whole episode of Seinfeld devoted to George’s attempt to get a good nickname at the office. I think his name of choice was T-bone.

Thinking back on my years so far at college, many of my friends and associates have eventually gotten a nickname. Some they seemed to bring with them and are totally inexplicable, like my buddy Skillet my freshman year. Nobody really knows why he was called Skillet and he’d been called that before he even came to school. But it fit him and I barely can remember his real name at all and I don't think he's listed in the phone book under Skillet. Others are a joke or name that is either misquoted or just wrong but is repeated enough that it becomes the “correct” way to say it. Marlo is a classic example of this. Marlow’s real name is Brandon. I don’t think I knew that until after hanging out with him for sometime. His freshman year, his friend heard the name Brandon and thought of the late actor Marlon Brando. Well he thought the name was Brandon Marlo, so he started calling him Brandon Marlo, Brandon Marlo, Brandon Marlo, until the Brandon was soon dropped and only Marlo remained.

Actually this truncation of names is another common forum for nicknames. Ty Lewis, my roommate and buddy, is often referred to as simply ‘Lew.’ And sometimes the abbreviation doesn’t occur until after some funny pronunciations and inside jokes. I had a roommate last year named Tony. Now many of my roommates in this same apartment would ‘urbanize’ our language with the addition of “O” or percussive “Fffflow” randomly in the middle or end of words. Tony became Tone (like Tone-Loc but white, from Texas and listens to Rush Limbaugh in the kitchen all day), then Tone-flo, then Tone-flee-o, then simply Flea-O. And it stuck. Other’s were a simple joke, like Heath and the Jay-Z song Izzo (H.O.V.A.). After singing along with the line, “H to the Izzo,” the similarity of H for Heath and (like Snoop Dogg’s “izzle”) the growing popular suffix Izzo, sounded humorous, particularly coming from Heath. So he began as “H to the Izzo” then, because nicknames are to be not only functional but simplistic, simply Izzo. After moving up to Sandy, I frequently talk to him via email. And when typing, Izzo and 1220 look very similar. So similar, that 1220 has since become synonymous with Izzo.

Duff: We should make up some fake names.
John: Why?
Duff: Just in case we have to communicate while we're inside.
John: OK.
Duff: I wanna be Kyle. I knew this guy at camp. He was maybe 13. He got *two* girls pregnant, man. *Two* girls pregnant. Yea, Kyle. Who you gonna be? John: Steve...
Duff: Steve.
John: Yeah.
Duff: OK, Steve.
John: OK, Kyle.
.........
Duff: Wait.
John: What?
Duff: I wanna change. I wanna be Steve.
John: I'm Steve; You're Karl.
Duff: Kyle!

But as for me, I always seem to be called D. How this works, I don’t know, but everywhere I go, eventually, I am “D.” I was “Big D” as a child, I imagine in a nice way to boost my young and fragile self-confidence, I could have very easily been “Little D,” having a father named Don. High School and freshman year of College it was just D, people feeling less inclined to complicate such subtle simplicity. For two years I proceeded to ignore my first given name and was referred to simply as Glazier for short, but then again with all the missionaries I knew, I didn’t know many of their first names either. But my first year back from Hong Kong, I starred in a short film that Scott Hannay, one of my friends and a resident on my floor in the dorms, was making for a student film festival. The topic was given and then the people had 24 hours to write the story, film it, edit it, and have it ready to submit. It was a pretty lame. Scott did wonders with the editing and filming, but the story was...weak. I played the character “D-Money” a cocky, 21 year-old ladies man, that wears Seventies cop glasses, a polo shirt with the collar up and a brown “Back to the Future” vest. I made a fool of myself at the Wilkinson Center in front of small evening crowd gathered to study or eat at the Cougar-eat. Nobody really ever saw the film, but we would joke about the nickname the rest of that year. Then last year, joking around with some snowboard buddies about “hustler” nicknames, I remembered the short film “Redemption” and said “D Money, that’s what they call me. D Money.” Everyone laughed and they wrote it down. And then for the rest of the snowboarding season, they all kept calling me that. It even got shortened down to D$ (pronounced the same though). And once we had made our slightly comedic snowboarding movie, everyone knew me as D Money. Now some even call me simply “Money.” But most of the time its D...just D.

“I had a nickname for you! You wanna know what it was? I'm not going to tell you...

...All right, it was "Laser.”