The Sputterly Utter

I've never liked my name much because it is too common and rhymes too readily with "Spacy." When I went to France, my name became exotic and inpronouncable and that really helped bring me around to liking it better. Hardly anyone calls me Spacy, or Space anymore.

When I was little I had an imaginary friend named George.

My mother used to call me "Toad" sometimes.

When I was 12, I changed from Catholic school to public school. I spent the entire summer fantasizing about being in a whole school of people who had never met me. I cut my hair extremely short and decided that I would come up with a new nickname for myself. I compiled lists of cool names taken from soap operas. I didn't want to take a name directly from a soap, but it was good research into what sort of name could be hot. I wanted something that seemed like it could be a plausible nickname for Tracy, but something sexy and more gender-ambiguous.

I chose "Chase."

Of course it didn't work, mainly because I didn't have the balls to pull it off. The haircut was also possibly a mistake as schoolmates were genuinely confused by my gender ambiguity and people really don't feel comfortable (especially between the ages of 12-15) not being sure whether a person is male or female.

I survived all that and learned some interesting life lessons. Then in high school I had another, more successful, naming experience. My high school had a radio club and every week a local AM station handed the operations over to us for two and a half hours on Sunday morning. My segment was weird news and movie reviews and I gave myself an on-air name: Chuck.

The name Chuck was taken up by my fellow AV nerds and it spread from them to the debate club nerds and naturally from there to the drama club nerds until my favorite nerds all over the state of Iowa knew me as Chuck. I felt that I was the Queen of the Nerds, and I was. I was named Godess of the Debate Team two years running.

I left Chuck behind when I went to college, along with drama clubs and debate.

In 1995, Justine and I drove cross-country together. During the trip we took on pseudonyms and called each other by our chosen names for the entire adventure. She was Viva and I was Lola. (I had a bit of a Marlene Dietrich fixation at that time).

Derrick briefly tried to nickname me "Blanche," which I quite liked, but it really just could not compete with Spacy. Though both names are apt enough.