skippy dot net

I was in Moscow in the late 1990s. My mom had some contract work there, and she took my dad and I with her so that we could do some site-seeing. One afternoon, while wandering aimlessly around the city, I noticed a man leaning on the wall of a building a block ahead of us. He was middle aged, wearing a light gray suit and white tennis shoes. As I noticed this, I jokingly said to my dad "Hey, look, it's the Russian Forrest Gump!" We shared a laugh, and kept walking, towards this man. As we got closer, I noticed that he was looking intently at me. His gaze never wavered as we approached, and I began to feel uncomfortable. As we drew next to him, he said loudly and clearly "Fish" and made two kisses in the air. It wasn't like he was blowing kisses at me ... he simply puckered and then smacked his lips. Dad and I stared blankly at this guy as we walked past, and somehow managed to suppress our laughter until we got to the next block. We both burst out with laughter. As our giggles subsided, the man went running past us at a brisk pace, turned a corner, and was gone.

To this day dad and I still crack up laughing about this. We have no idea what he was doing, or what, if anything, he may have been trying to communicate.

Completely unrelated to that story, I had pet fish when I was in college. The fish I had were simple goldfish -- the kind with the big bulgy eyes. I started with a single fish, and had it for several months. On a lark, I named it Prometheus, and enjoyed the irony of having an aquatic animal named after the guy who stole fire from the gods. I later added a second, and then a third, fish to my collection. The second fish I named Phlogiston, keeping with the water/fire irony. I can't now remember the name of the third fish, but I know I kept not only with the fire motif, but also with "P" as the first letter of the word. I think I named it Pyre, but I'm just not sure now.

My cat Echo scared all three fish to death.

When I moved to Lima after college to work for Arbor Health Care, I placed the fish on a wide, low bookcase just under the front window of my apartment. I got my cats Xanth and Echo a couple weeks after I had moved to Lima, when they were both just kittens. For about two weeks in a row, the same sequence of events would occur every morning. I would wake up, feed the kittens, and then walk to the fish tank to feed the fish. As I approached the tank, Echo would race across the room, jump onto the couch, then onto the top of the fish tank, and finally onto the window sill so that she could look down upon the fish. This routine always made me smile in the morning.

One morning, after this routine had been firmly established, Echo took her time eating breakfast. By the time she raced across the room to the couch, I had already lifted the lid of the fish tank. Echo leaped onto the couch, and then sprang into the air toward the tank, where she promptly fell in in a huge splash. She floundered and made a mess. She was scared and confused, as were all three fish! I finally managed to pull her out of the water, and wrapped her in a towel. When I came home from work that afternoon, I found one of the fish floating at the surface. Alas, I don't remember which fish expired first.

Surprisingly, Echo did not learn her lesson, and she continued to leap from the couch onto the fish tank. I think you can see where this is going. Twice more she fell into the tank. Twice more a fish died. When the third fish finally expired, I dismantled the fish tank. Surprisingly, Echo stopped racing across the couch toward that window once the tank was removed.

People often raise an eyebrow, or otherwise express surprise, when I tell them my email address. "Skippy?" they say. This is usually followed by "Why Skippy?" The answer is surprisingly mundane, but that won't stop me from writing a lengthy post about the matter! And it has nothing to do with peanut butter, or a kangaroo.

Adolescence

For most of my childhood I was Scott. When I hit middle school I was usually called by my last name at school, since there was another Scott in my class. Presumably the other Scott was the cooler one, because he got to use the name. I've never figured out the social stratification that occurred to relegate me to my last name.

In middle school I also started playing sports at the local recreation center, having decided that the sports teams at my parochial school were off limits to me. I played both football and basketball. The coach for both teams was the same guy. The coach had a hard time remembering my name. I think there was also another Scott on the team, but I think he dropped out after just a couple of practices. Nonetheless, at the very first basketball practice the coach declared that he would never be able to remember my name and demanded that I give myself a nickname.

Looking back, I have no idea why he thought any nickname I might provide would be any more memorable than my given name. In reality, of course, I didn't disappoint: I suggested "Toothpick". At the time, I thought myself clever for selecting this moniker, and felt that it was fitting: I was tall and lanky. If I wasn't the tallest (and skinniest!) kid on the team, I was an extremely close runner-up. I played basketball for several seasons, and football too, and Toothpick I was for all that time.

Teenager

In 7th and 8th grade I attended OWjL Camp (usually dubbed "Nerd Camp" by those who didn't go). During one of these summers (probably the latter), I was listening to a lot of Alice Cooper, and had recently seen his Raise Your Fist And Yell tour. I was only too happy to share my enthusiasm for Alice Cooper with my fellow campers, and one of the counselors dubbed me "Coop". That appellation stayed through my time at camp, and immediately faded from use when I returned home, since no one I regularly fraternize with attended OWjL camp with me.

By the time I reached high school, I was back to Scott for most people.

College

In my sophomore year of college, I moved into a giant Victorian house with four of my buddies. Every adult I knew cautioned me against this course of action, but I assured them that we were all really good friends and that it would work out okay. Living with me were Jay, Pat, Bryan and Tom. Jay, ever the comedian, dubbed the house "The Love Barn" (with the supporting catchphrase of "Help put the barn back in love!").

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Love Barn. In hindsight, it was a great experience, and we had a lot of fun there. While I was actually living there, though, it was a veritable hell on earth, with five strong-willed egotistical guys constantly trying to one-up one another. I couldn't live out the entire lease, and left after about 9 months. I was lucky to be able to still call Tom a friend at the end of my residence.

At the Love Barn we did basically three things: watch "Talk Soup" with Greg Kinnear whenever it was on, play Super Mario Kart or Madden '97 (the latter was the preferred conflict resolution method, and more often then not determined who's turn it was to wash dishes), and occasionally do our home work. One day, Tom, Bryan, Pat and I were engaged in a Madden '97 tournament ladder while Jay was at class. Jay came home early and burst into the living room announcing "We need nicknames!" This was not uncharacteristic of Jay: he would often make wild pronouncements with little provocation.

Jay looked at Tom and declared "You're like a little elf boy! You ARE an elfboy!" Thus was Tom ever after known as Elfboy. I fell next to Jay's gaze and he exclaimed "Skippy!" with no other commentary. After this, Jay ran out of steam, and assigned no more nicknames. Instead, he retired to his room to do his homework. There was a surprised silence in the wake of his exit, but then the four of us returned to our game. Tom and I each secretly believed that the moment had passed, and that the nicknames would not stick. Boy were we wrong.

As time went on, more and more people referred to me as Skippy. As it became commonplace amongst all my friends, so too did it trickle up to my parents, who would call me by my nickname when they called or came to visit me at the Love Barn.

Now You Know

So that's the exciting tale of "Why Skippy?" I've been Skippy for over a dozen years now. I answer to it automatically whenever people -- even complete strangers -- say things like "Damn Skippy!" People have experimented with various permutations: Skip, Skipford, Skipmeister, Baron Von Skippy, and who knows what else. There are a great many people who know my given name, but only ever refer to me as Skippy. Although I rarely refer to myself as Skippy, there are occasions where I'm better known for that name (or this domain) and so rely on it when introducing myself.

Skippy is not a particularly common nickname (except, apparently, for pets), and yet I still find it extremely hard to secure the skippy username when signing up for new online services!