dysfunctional nicknames

The girls and I have decided that we all need nicknames. Its not that we don’t have perfectly good nicknames, like Shelly and Geory and H. But we decided to take it one step further and make up dysfunctional nicknames. It was Georgia who came up with the idea, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has spent any time at all with my twelve year old. She’s not a real linear thinker.

It happened because Georgia was doing laundry for me to work off the money I had to shell out to buy her a new cell phone. She forgot to charge hers, the battery died and she lost it at her cousin’s house. Three months after she first got one. Georgia was doing laundry for a while.

I had just gone running, and I left my running clothes in the hallway when I went to take a shower, asking Georgia to take them down with the rest of the wash. When I got out of the shower, I asked Georgia if she’d put my clothes in the laundry, and she said “Yeah, but mom, Holy Boob Sweat!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her, and when I did, I left an opening for her to excitedly exclaim “That’s your new nickname!” which only made me laugh more. For whatever reason, I agreed to the handle. I did warn her that payback isn’t always nice and she was going to get a name from me of at least equal value. She told me to bring it on.

A few weeks later, I put Georgia on house arrest until her room was clean, and as the bags of trash and St. Vinnie’s clothes came out, so did this smell. I knew right then what Georgia’s name was going to be. “Armpit Room.” She took it on almost proudly.

We had a harder time getting a name for Holly. She’s graceful and cute and ridiculously tidy. Sometimes she cleans things without my asking. But this afternoon, while getting ready to go grocery shopping, she was showing us some trick and we noticed how incredibly disproportionate her arms are to the rest of her body. I said “Holy Monkey Arms Holly!” and we knew she had her name. We think she got off pretty easy with Monkey Arms, which she was perfectly fine with.

On the way to grocery shopping, we considered our nicknames initials. Holly’s is MA, which is just plain fun to say. Mine is BS, which all three of us thought was hysterical. Georgia’s initials seemed kind of boring as only AR, until we thought of saying it like a pirate might. That made all the difference.

The kids were being enchanting as an attempt to avoid bed. They sat on my bed, telling silly stories. Georgia was throwing a tennis ball for Somewhere. It bounced off the dogs’ teeth and landed between my bed and the wall. Holly reached down to get it, and came up with a smile and the ball. “That’s why they call me MA,” she said.

“Why? Cause your good at finding things?” I asked.

“No. Cause I have Monkey Arms!” she told me, raising them above her head, giggling. We all cracked up, and bedtime got delayed ten more minutes.

When we were all finally in our rooms, we called out our new nicknames to each other with goodnights, like the Walton’s.

“Night, Maaaaaaa.”

“Night, Arrrrrrrr.”

Then in unison, the girls call out to me with giggles in their voices “Night BS.”

It made me realize how much of our days we fill with silliness. And that I wouldn’t have it any other way.