Nicknames

If you have a nickname, I hope it's a good one.

Mine is a good one. Scarecrow. I could have been called Slim. Or one of those reverse names, Shortie or Half-pint. I'll stick to Scarecrow. It's what everyone calls me.

I inadvertently gave my friend Brandon a nickname and with the most recent Scarecrow Day and Miss Montez adding a new addition to it, everyone now calls him by it. The new addition was "Call Brandon Milkshake."

Yes, thanks to me, everyone now calls Brandon Milkshake. Noone even cares why. He's just suffered through the weekend being called Milkshake by everybody. It was one thing when I was the only one calling him that, it was an inside joke between us, but now everybody is.

OK, here's the story of how the name came in to being.

Brandon, Miss Montez, Lidia, and I all hopped into the Fairlane to take a road trip to the big mighty bookstore. Along the way we stopped to get milkshakes. Mine was a vanilla malted. Very yummy. When drinking milkshakes it is obligatory that someone has to start singing Milkshake by Kelis. I don't know who started it just that it got started. Eventually we got over it. Stopped singing. That was the end of it. Or it should have been.

Barney Fife cop pulled us over because Miss Montez when she renewed her car tag several months before had forgotten to put the stickers on the tag. So while she's talking to him the rest of us were talking to each other. Brandon was in the backseat. I was in the front. He is a photographer. I asked him something about how he did this effect with his camera, because he uses film, not a digital camera, and he leaned up and said, "I could teach you, but I'd have to charge." This caused me to snort malted milkshake up my nose. Not pleasant.

Ever since then I greet him with "Hey, Milkshake!"

I didn't mean to scar him for life with a stupid nickname.

Brandon, you have my sincere apologies. It could have been worse.