Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Big M

I would love to have a cool nickname, but the latest one has been given to me only because this woman at work in the sales department, let's call her 'Susan' (actually her real name), still cannot remember how to pronounce my name even though I've been at this job for a month now. A nickname given only as a substitute for a brain fart is not a good reason for having a nickname. She knows my name starts with an M, so she started calling me M, and then it became Big M. I don't feel big, but then maybe there are some tiny people out there with my name who she knows and I don't. It's really not difficult, but I've had people call me Marcel, Mariel, Muriel, Morrel (which I believe is a type of mushroom), Meryl, May-relle, and the list goes on. Perhaps one day I'll be known as the Scarlet Sniper or something, but for now, I'll just be Marelle, thanks.
Actually, I was called Hopscotch for a while by a German friend I met long ago and far away, but she was the only one who took to calling me by that particular moniker, and that was only because she couldn't say my name (and I'll forgive her because we all know Germans trying to speak English should be given a break), and she thought it was hilarious that the literal translation of my name is "hopscotch" in French. But I seem to have lost touch with her, and therefore with that nickname.
Other than that, however, there isn't really anything else you can do with my name except shorten it to Melle, and then people just think it's Mel and assume I'm a Melanie, or a Melissa. Not that there's anything wrong with those names, but that's just not original enough a nickname to really constitute a check mark on my list of having earned a "cool" nickname.
I think Melle might be "honey" in Portuguese, but that's not a nickname, that's a term of endearment, which only very special people and annoying trailer park cashiers at the grocery store use on me.
No, a nickname has got to be for doing something outrageous like scaling a building in NYC without ropes or something. I'll work on it.

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