Estoy Nueces

I am home alone tonight and that can be a wonderful thing. I usually just fritter the time away when the Drummerboy isn't home. Tonight I've been moving all of my showprep sites (sites I use to prepare my radio shows) to a new screen name. I needed a place that I could surf without anyone knowing that I was online and interrupting me with instant messages. Yes, I know, I can block all instant messages, but when I am on my main screen name I do like my mom and sister to be able to IM. I've been at the computer for over two hours now and finally getting around to updating journal/dairy/website.

I've been thinking about my favorite feature about the internet: Being able to pick my own nickname. I have always wanted a nickname that really sticks. I've never had one. In high school a friend began calling me "J.Fred" for some reason. I quickly grabbed onto the nickname and even had a shirt with that name on the back. He was probably the only one that ever called me J.Fred but I clung to it. It wasn't until I became more aware of the world of media that I discovered J.Fred Muggs was the chimp on the Today show in the '50s or 60s with Dave Garrison. I don't THINK that was what my friend Bryan had in mind when he called me that... hmmmm

I went to work for a newspaper when I was in college. I finally, actually, was called Scoop for a short period of time. That was the greatest thing in the world. If I had been brave I might have started to wear a straw hat with a card reading "PRESS" in the band. I still am not that brave. As much as I enjoyed being called Scoop, it was the most inappropriate nickname. I set new standards for bad reporting. The entire police department of our town quit one day. What a news story! My editor instructed me to call the city councilmen to get their reactions. Each one said something to the effect of "What? They did what?" or "No comment." Did I dig and push and ask the probing questions that Sam Donaldson would ask? No, I said, "okay, thank you" and hung up. I still got my first front page byline with that story but I felt like a sham.

I once read a horoscope about Pisces and it said, "You love nicknames so much you'll resort to giving yourself one!" How true!

Of course, I got into radio in college. Radio is the perfect opportunity to give yourself a new name. I had the choice of any name or any nickname in the world. All I had to do was use it. I went with my real name. Well, almost my real name. I couldn't pronounce my real last name (yes, Williams is a real tongue twister) so my bosses suggested I go with the single first name. That at least had an air of mystery to it, like Cher or Liberace. I went with the real first name, eventually added back Williams when I learned to pronounce it and it's been that way ever since. When I got married I was excited because, now, suddenly, since I took my husband's name for my legal name, I truly had an "air name" for the first time. No one could look up Williams in the phone book and find me (like they could have found me before among the seventeen pages of Williams).

Now, the internet comes along and I can be anybody I want to be. AOL lets me pick almost any name in the world I want (but they will usually add 52087 after it because thousands of people have gotten to it first). How lucky to pick [email protected] and no one had it first. It may not mean exactly what I want it to mean I'm afraid. Estoy Nueces means "I'm nuts" in Spanish (in a temporary sense), but, of course, I don't know if Nueces means Nuts in the crazy sense at all in Spanish or if I am stating the fact that I am literally a seed pod from a nut tree. Or I may be saying something obscene like you are when you say "Tiene huevos?" (which literally means, Do you have eggs? but really means Do you have balls/testicles?). Oh well, it is a long standing tradition in my family, I think. When I was a kid we moved to the country and my dad put up a sign at the end of the road that said something like "El Poco Casita" which he meant to mean "The Little House." It really means "The Little, Little House" with a mix of genders, as if you said, in English, "My Uncle used to love me but she died" (thank you Roger Miller). I thought I was the coolest 8 year old in the Texas Panhandle for "knowing" Spanish. Didn't know until I took it in high school how Dad had abused the grammar so badly. And here I am doing the same thing.

So, this site and diary name is Nueces and I will call myself Pecan, since that is the Texas State Tree, they are gorgeous trees and I love anything with pecans, especially pecan pies. I finally have found a nickname for myself, even if it only is in use in this cyber journal world.