Man, What A Manifesto!

I like the word sobriquet.  I've never had a nickname.  At least not one that was not derogatory, but technically, that would be an epithet, not a proper nickname.  For example, I knew a kid in middle school whose name was Larry, but everyone called him Rocko.  That's a nickname.

Interestingly, a person I see on my dog walks is named Rocco, but that's a proper Italian name & not a nickname at all.

The closest I've had to a nickname was my last name.  Because in middle school & in high school pretty much everyone had to take a P.E. class, & because the coaches in "physical education" classes called everyone by their last name, I was usually called "Dickerson" by my classmates.  These did not include my closest friends, or the high school equivalent (I am currently in touch with only a few of the people I went to high school with, &, tellingly, none of them were in my graduating class).  My teachers also called me "Gary."  But it's enough that, if someone were to say "Dickerson," I'd respond as if they called me by my first name.

What would I have liked my nickname to have been?  How the hell should I know?

I do know what I am glad it isn't.  My father, who had the awesome named Everett Ray Dickerson, had a nickname, & not a very inventive one: people (including my mother) called him "Dick."  I'm sure the word had the same double meaning at the time (it's what people have called a penis for centuries I bet) but it was common enough that, rather than being called by the lovely name Everett, my father preferred "Dick."

As did his brother, my uncle Harold.  It's true!  One time I happened to be with both of them at their work - they worked together at that point in their lives - & someone said, "Dick!" & both of them turned around to answer.  That was freaky.