Entries (RSS)When I was little (ya know, less than 10 years old), I used to wear XL t-shirts as nightgowns. These would quite often be freebie shirts that my dad had collected somewhere. One in particular that I can remember was green with yellow writing. It was probably the only green thing I ever wore since I’m not a fan of the color and I don’t think it looks good on me. I couldn’t tell you what it was a shirt for, but it had a cartoon character on it named Barney Giggles. At that age, I would always give my parents a kiss goodnight, and whenever I wore that particular shirt, my dad would say “Barney Giggles.” For some reason, this always made me laugh. The shirt got old and has long since been thrown away, but this started a trend of my dad sometimes calling me “Barney Giggles.”
Around that time I was also playing soccer in the fall. That was a short-lived experience for me since we moved a few years later and, around here, soccer wasn’t all that popular. One year, while getting us settled for team pictures, my dad said “Hey, Barney Giggles!” I looked over at him, and it happened to be right when the picture was being taken. So, I now have a team picture in which I’m kneeling in the front of the group, but looking up and to the right towards where my dad happened to be standing. You’d think there’d have been several pictures and at least one of the others would have been a better overall pose, but I apparently wasn’t that lucky.
Over the years, Dad got out of the habit of calling me that, but during high school, my brother brought it up in front of a bunch of friends. Some of them started calling me this, and then of course shortened it to either “Barney” or “Giggles”. I doubt I would have minded it much except this was also when the big purple dinosaur was quite popular. Needless to say, being called “Barney” at that point was less than desirable, especially around almost everyone else who had no idea what it really referred to.
I’ve had quite a few other nicknames over the years, but that one is probably the most memorable, not to mention the most distinctive and least self-explanatory. It’s long since run it’s course though, so while I’m sure at least a couple of you will start trying to call me that, I doubt it’s going to do you much good.
