A Rose By Any Other Name

Why do certain people constantly attract nicknames and others get called strictly by their real names? I love nicknames. I dream of being called a multitude of nicknames. Like Megalicious. Or Megan the Maniac. But hardly anyone ever calls me by a nickname. Aunt Linnie calls me "Meglet". Dallas Edeler called me "maggot" in 5th grade because he said I was round and pale just like a real maggot. A college boyfriend called me "Little Weirdo." And that's my entire list of nicknames.

In a strange twist of normalcy, I have recently acquired a few nicknames, and all of them have been from coworkers:

1) Smiley
Wayne calls me "Smiley" every time we pass in the hall. I can't explain this one.

2) Megasaurous Wrecks

Todd and Steve like to tape cut-up pieces of Post-It notes to our name tags so that our names can transform into a multitude of variants. I like to put a blank piece over the "T" in Todd's name making him simply "odd." It seems to fit. One of his favorites for me started as Megasaurous, and soon morphed into Megasaurous Rex. Then I broke a piece of equipment and the name became Megasaurous Wrecks. It has a fun wring to it.

3) Eye Candy
Susie, a very attractive, single, 26 year old has been in our group for about a year. We like to go on a walk together every afternoon. Stacy is a 32 year old single guy who sits one aisle over. He is good friends with Kevin S, both of whom like to join us on our walks. Just to make sure there is no confusion, "Kevin S." is my coworker and "Kevin H" is my husband. I am continually recruiting more walkers, but for whatever reason most people don't want to take the time to walk around the outside of the building.

Sometimes our walks end up being just the 4 of us, and one time last summer, Stacy and Kevin S. were ready for the walk but Susie wasn't sitting at her desk. Stacy raised one eyebrow and stated that he wanted to wait until his 'eye candy' was there.

Dumbfounded that he would say such a thing right in the middle of the hallway, I asked what he meant, and he said that Susie was very attractive. He thought she was eye candy. Kevin S. responded that his was already there.

Being particularly slow, I asked if he thought she was cute, too. He responded, "No. I meant that you were already here so I am ready to go." Ummm....that makes it awkward. To make it even more awkward, Stacy jumped in and called me "Eye Candy" in front of one of our administrative assistants AND in front of our HR representative.

Susie doesn't know that Stacy refers to her as eye candy and he is embarrassed that she might find out about it someday.