The Long, Long Road to Spawn

When my firstborn son was just a wee thing, we called him “Spud”. He was kind of potato-shaped, bald and had eyes. It seemed appropriate. As soon as he was able to speak, he began insisting that we call him by his real name, so we did. As siblings were added, we began nicknaming them, too, and while our oldest continued to claim he preferred being called by his real name, from time to time, I’d see a glimmer of regret or envy in his eyes.

Right around the time he was in third grade, and he started infrequently getting in trouble in school, he asked for a nickname. I asked him if he had any ideas, which he didn’t, and he refused all the nicknames we suggested. One evening, we were driving home from school after an assembly, and pre-Spawn was in a dreadful mood, squirming ferociously in his seat, mouthing off to me and the other kids, and generally putting up a fuss.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I had a bad day. No, I had a bad MONTH!” he replied

“Well, surely there was something good about it,” I responded. He pondered for a short while. I should probably mention that I was driving an older van, which made a lot of noise, particularly on rough streets. Finally, he said, “At least I didn’t get a spike through my head.”

“WHAT?” I blurted, “A SPIKE through your head? Why would you get a spike through your head?”

He started laughing. “No, I didn’t say that,” and by now he was laughing so hard, he couldn’t speak. My other son and daughter were laughing pretty hard, too. I decided to go a little over the top to see if I could keep them laughing, so I said, “Gee, that school is a lot tougher than I thought if they’ve been putting spikes through people’s heads. The worst that ever happened to me was getting sent to the principal’s office!”

He finally caught his breath and said, “No, I said ‘at least I didn’t get a pink slip this month’, but I was kinda mumbling.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” I replied, making a big show of my relief, ”that whole spike thing was kinda scary.”

So, for the next couple of years, we called him Spike. Then he asked us to go back to his real name, and we did, but he decided he didn’t care for that either.

Once again in the van, this time on the way to the Wal-Mart, and he said, “I wish I had a nickname,” and then he sighed theatrically.

“Well, we used to call you Spike, but you asked us to quit,” I answered.

“No, not THAT kind of nickname, you know, something like my sister and brother have… something, I don’t know, kind of sweet,” he said.

I was stymied. Here was my son, who was trying on a daily basis to look tough as a Harley Biker, wearing increasingly dark t-shirts with ever more belligerent logos and sayings on them, asking to be called by a “sweet” nickname.

With my mouth hanging slightly open, I pondered for a few minutes. I just couldn’t think of anything. The child formerly known as Spike couldn’t come up with anything either. So, I started thinking of nicknames I had been called, or had heard other kids called when I was little.

“How about Pumpkin?” I asked.

“Too girly,” he said.

“Tater? Sport? Tiger?” I asked.

“No, I want to be called something, I don’t know, NICER,” he said.

“Nicer? Nicer how?” I queried.

“I don’t know, something softer maybe,” he said.

I thought about the other kids’ nicknames – Doodle and Bunny.

I mused aloud, “Something softer, something nicer, something…..Fluffy?”

“Fluffy, yeah, that’s it,” he said, “something fluffy.” And then he started laughing. Doodle and Bunny started laughing, too.

“Well, I think Fluffy is probably the fluffiest name I can think of, Hon,” I answered, laughing myself.

My daughter exploded with laughter, “Fluffy? FLUFFY? Ha, ha, FLUFFY!” she said, and pointed at him from her seat.

He rolled his eyes and said, “Well, only at home, OK?”

“Fluffy it is,” I answered.

“Fluffy” actually lasted about 4 years as a nickname, then as a 16 year old, he didn’t want any name at all. He was in his “I hate everyone, and I’m going to wear black all the time because it makes me look scary” phase, and he would get cheesed at me even when I used his given name. I’d call to him, and he’d growl, slam doors, snarl, and stomp off. I slipped one day and called him Fluffy, and he dug his heels into the kitchen linoleum, fixed me in the eye with as masterful a gaze as a scrawny, awkward teenaged boy can muster, and growled, pointing at me, “NO NICKNAMES. I HAVE NO NICKNAME!”

Being the sort of person who uses humor ‘til way past the point of prudence, I said, “Well, that would make you ‘Boy With No Nickname’, then, wouldn’t it? How about BWNN?”

He paused in his anger, thought for a moment, and then unexpectedly said, “OK, BWNN, it is.”

He was “BWNN” for about 10 months, and he liked it so much, and so did the rest of us, that our parrot learned to call him “BWNN” and would sing it out in his high-pitched voice when “BWNN” came into his line of sight.

Well, “BWNN” got old, and he still couldn’t face life without a nickname, so we’ve settled on “Spawn” as being sufficiently intimidating and masculine, and he seems happy with it. Every so often, though, I slip and call him “Fluffy” again because it’s so contradictory to his image, but so much more reflective of the sensitive, loving, funny, compassionate person that he really is.

I have no idea how long the “Spawn” era will be. I just hope the next nickname has vowels; “BWNN” was kind of hard to say.