Names People Call Me

"The Names People Call Me" Watercolor & Ink © 2022 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

They called us the “Bunnies,” on account of a nickname my mother's father had given her when she was very young, as she’d worn feet pajamas with bunny ears.

I imagine that most of us have had nicknames and labels placed on us, as if attempting to define us in some way. Everyone in my family had his or her fair share of nicknames through the years. Me? I had a lot of names.  Besides “goodie two shoes” and “mother hen,” names bestowed on me by my younger sisters, I also was given names by my folks.  “Meat patties” was a favorite because of the size 5 by 5-E width feet that I’d inherited from my dad.  “Bonzi” was also a favorite of my parents and sisters for the way I supposedly “bulldozed” (through doorways due to wide shoulders), often knocking my sisters out of the way when I passed, so asserted my family in typical exaggerated fashion.  I still, to this day, think that one was undeserved, and I’m holding my ground on that! 

“Meat Patties”.  (Wearing Dad’s work boots) Watercolor & Ink    © 2023 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

In grammar school, the “mean girls” called me “teacher’s pet” and the boys called me “Little Jane” after the Dick and Jane books we read during reading time and because I was so short, and still wore black and white oxfords and dresses like Jane. Plus, she was always telling Dick what to do.  What can I say?! That’s a trait that would be here to stay.  Of course, I also heard a lot of the traditional names for which short kids were teased, “shorty, shortstop, shrimp,” and for many years, “Minnie Linnie,” a nod to our vintage Disney childhood of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  I was also given the nickname, “Gremlin” by a boy I liked in Jr. High, which actually stuck for a long time at school.  This was before the first “subcompact” AMC Gremlin cars emerged, generally known as “lemons,” and long before the Gremlin movies came out, depicting nasty, devious little creatures who wreaked havoc. In the time of my nicknaming, Gremlins were defined just as mischievous imps or elves.  I could live with that one.   My sisters, however, thought the movie depiction more appropriate.

As a woman in our country, our names change as we marry, then again back to our birth names sometimes as we divorce. Then if you are fated to marry more than once, the cycle is repeated with a new surname. Heaven forbid you have to repeat that scenario yet again! At one point my ex-husband convinced me to legally change my first name as well since it didn't have the ring of sophistication that he desired, and he couldn't pronounce the short i sound, Spanish being his first language. (One day I will post the story of that unforgettable court appearance to do that!) All that to say, I have had a remarkably long string of names, which contributed to somewhat of an identity crises. Now, I am saddled with a legal first name I don't use since I've gone back to my birth name of Linnie, and to make it even more comical, I added my new married surname of Lindsay. Linnie Lindsay....Alas, I sound like character in a Disney movie.

I think about the nicknames and the labels or descriptors we place on people, either in jest or affection, or merely innocent observations from the perspective of the labeler.  While I never really minded being the shortest one in my class every year, I did mind some of the less flattering names given by family. When we complained of the teasing as kids, Dad would laugh and expound on his philosophy that “If you can survive this family, you will be able to handle anything anyone dishes out to you in life.”  Nope.  Nice try, Dad.

          This painting was inspired by the many labels I have been given by others in life. While each of these labels may reflect me at a given moment, they are only facets of me; ever-changing facets and characteristics that evolve as I grow through life.  Often, they are responses by another trying to make sense of me or trying to reaffirm themselves perhaps. I am any and all of these descriptors, at times combinations of them, still other times, even contradictory ones. Sometimes I am none of them at all, but the free-flowing color below.  I cannot, will not, be boxed.

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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".