What does your nickname say about you?

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Do you have a nickname? If you grew up in a family like mine, a better question might be: How many nicknames do you have? I’m sure I have about nine, with three in active rotation. Most people in my family just call me a by a shortened version of my name, but my father calls me something that no one else does.

Now, my mother is very southern, so she calls everyone baby, honey, or darling (daaah-lin, with her drawl). My father, however, calls me “Shorty,” except it sounds like “Shaw-tee.” He’s been calling me that since I was a little girl. Other people used to taunt me about being short, but I always thought he meant it as a term of endearment. In school, I was usually one of the shortest kids in my class. As a matter of fact, mother claims I was so short that I could walk under the kitchen table until I was about five years old. (She exaggerates.) But I think (I hope) my father continues to call me that because, in a way, he still thinks of me as a little girl. He never seems to know my age, and he seems surprised when I tell him how old I am.Then again, I could be reading too much into this.  Maybe he still calls me “Shaw-tee” just because it’s the truth.

So, 2 Dope readers, do you have a nickname? You can tell us. We won’t tell anyone else. 🙂

**Last week’s Weekly Writing Challenge on WordPress.com was to write about the power of names. This post was my first attempt to participate.