The Decompression of a Boomer

…my name.  Take ‘Joddy 123’:   ‘Joddy’ is one of the nicknames I acquired as a kid, assigned to me by my older brother.  Other childhood nicknames included,  ‘Yaddy,’  ‘Blowsie’ and ‘Yosey-pheenie.’

My real name is Josephine, although I have always gone by  ‘Jody.’  I asked my mother somewhere along the way why she and my dad named me Josephine.  She replied that Josephine is a nice name,  “sophisticated,” and when I am older and sophisticated then I could adopt  my real name.  Well, yeah, maybe when I’m 95.

You don’t hear the name Josephine very much.   I recall having run across it less than five times in my entire life.  The character in the movie “Some Like it Hot”- you know, that female band member played by Tony Curtis in drag, she was a Josephine.  Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife was named ‘Josephine.’   (Could that possibly bode well?)   I lived in Sweden with my husband 25 years ago, for four years, during which time I took a “Swedish for Immigrants” class. There was a frumpy character in the Swedish language instruction book named ‘Gammal Josephine.’ Gammal means “old” in Swedish. As I said, maybe when I’m 95.  I don’t recall ever meeting another person named Josephine.  Seriously.

So… back to my nicknames. I acquired “Yaddy” in High School when I was on the phone hours at a  time, yakking with my best friend, Barbara Synhorst. That’s her real name.  I don’t know whatever happened to her.  My older sister would call from college and immediately rail against me to my parents about how she had been trying to call  for days but “Yaddy was on the phone!”  (This was several decades before cell phones.)  Which, I was.

In High School my mother called me ‘Wiggly Butt’ and ‘Scarlett O’Hara.’  I got the ‘Wiggly Butt.’  I would pass her in the house, trying to be invisible,  while making a straight shot to my bedroom.  She would spot me and declare loudly, “There goes ‘Wiggly Butt!'”   I had terrible posture; I’m not sure how much that contributed to my so-called wiggle.   The Scarlett O’Hara thing I tried to ignore and I was certainly not going to ask her what she meant by that, but many years later I brought it up to my husband who allowed that she was obviously jealous of me.  So, I guess the Scarlett O’Hara thing was a compliment.

My husband affectionately calls me, ‘Fidget,’  because I do, constantly. He says I’m thin because I fidget my weight off.  Then he spotted an article in our local newspaper titled, Fidgeting Your Way to Fitness.  He cut it out and posted it on our fridge.  “See, I told you so!” he declared, pointing it out to me. I fidgeted.  I found out soon after that my younger sister is known at her workplace as ‘Twitch.’

My husband has other affectionate names for me.  We aren’t inclined toward names like ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.’ He calls me “frusan.”  He traveled to Japan several times and compiled the expression.  ‘Fru’ means ‘wife’ in Swedish (and maybe several other languages) and ‘san’ is the Japanese ending meaning friend or something that the Japanese affectionately attach to lots  of words.

I call my husband ‘honung’ which is Swedish for ‘honey.’  I started calling him that while we were living there, but our Swedish friends were appalled.  They would never call someone they loved ‘honung.’  I guess it would be like us calling our spouse ‘peanut butter.’

My husband also affectionately called me ‘dimple-ass’ for a while, about two years ago.  There is a story behind that one, which does involve a dimple that appeared in my behind.  Hmmm…with nicknames like ‘Wiggly Butt’  and ‘Dimple Ass’ maybe I’m destined to  have a category on my blog strictly dedicated to ‘my butt.’   I’ve been sitting on it too long today already so better put a wrap on this.