Several people have called me “Dan” this week.
I’ve been “Danny” all my life. Unless I’m in a Spanish-speaking environment, I introduce myself as “Danny” or “Danny Peck,” which tends to be transmuted into “Dannypeck,” one word. My family calls me “Dan,” which I don’t mind, and would never have even really taken notice of except that my aunt once introduced me to several people at her church as “my nephew Dan,” and I thought that was a little strange (as this is how those people would know me, rather than “Danny”) until I realized that that’s pretty much all she ever calls me and would have seemed strange to her to introduce me as “Danny.”
But other than from my family, I hate being called “Dan.” There are some notable excptions, though. Like when I was a sophomore in high school, a certain group of my female friends got lazy and began calling everyone by the first syllable of their name, whether it sounded right or not. Somehow, in coming about that way, I don’t mind being shortened to “Dan” even to this day, but only amonst that group.
Then somewhere around junior or senior year of high school, Celia coined the nickname “Dirty Dan” for me (a mantle from which I’ve tried to distance myself more and more lately). The audience present at the time happened to be a rather large group of my guy friends, and among this group the name stuck, also sometimes simply shortened to “Dan.” It’s not so much that I liked it, but I perferred “Dan” to “Dirty Dan” in that context and didn’t argue with the moniker.
Jerry has called me “Dan” for years because of that second occurance. I actually asked him to make an effort to call me “Danny” before we left for Ecuador so that other people there wouldn’t pick up “Dan.” For the most part, I tended to get both syllables and ignored the couple instances of laziness.
Now in the words of Ron White, I told those stories to tell this story. The three extra-familial instances of being “Dan” this week got totally different reactions from me, all because of the sources from which they came. One I ignored as a normal occurance, one just seemed a little strange, and one quite frankly ticked me off. I decided that was a little out-of-proportion emotional response and have since totally recognized how ridiculous it is to think somebody needs to earn the ability to call me “Dan,” especially when I don’t usually publicize my general loathing for it.
On a related note, I also hate being called Daniel. Yes, it’s my real name (which funnily enough surprises a lot of people) but I just think it’s an ugly name. Sorry, mom. Maybe it’s just because of the fact that for the first twelve years of my life, only three people ever called me “Daniel.” Two were my grandparents, and they gave in to “Danny” pretty early on. The third person, my Great Aunt Mary, still calls me “Daniel” to this day, but when you’re anyone’s Great Aunt Mary, you can call them whatever you want.
I said that no one else called me “Daniel” for the first twelve years of my life because when I moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, I actually somehow accidentally started going by “Daniel” at school. It became so stuck even in the first couple of days that introducing myself as “Danny” for the proceeding two years and signing all of my assignments that way never got any friends or teachers that I can remember to call me anything other than “Daniel.” My best friend called me Daniel. My band director called me Daniel. I even dated a girl who knew me both at school and at church (where I was “Danny”), and went back and forth between what she knew I perferred and what she heard everyone else called me.
I actually like “Daniel”‘s biblical meaning and feel it to be pretty appropriate for me. That doesn’t make it any more phonetically pleasing. I therefore quickly corrected all of my teachers’ class rolls when I moved to Elizabeth City and thus managed to preempt almost every use of my legal name.
Upon thinking about this whole Dan/Daniel/Danny thing, I’ve actually realized how many other nicknames I’ve picked up at and for varying times in my life. “Hawaii,” “Yoda,” “Stary-McScarykins,” “Dirty Dan,” “The Bearded Wonder,” “Phantom,” “Prince Charming,” “Wheels McGrath,” “Lord Farquad,” and “Fanny Pack” all symbolize different people, places, and times in my life. No, I didn’t make any of those up myself, and I can’t believe I actually even wrote a couple of them. Several more are staying off the list.
The point is, that while my outlook, experiences, attitudes, plans, and location have changed with just about every one of those nicknames, I probably shouldn’t get mad when people call me something other than “Danny” or “Dannypeck.” If I can deal with Daniel (in a Spanish accent) and recognize it as just a word that symbolizes a person (that happens to be myself), and certainly if I can do that with “Fanny Pack,” (an unfortanate similarity in sounds that no one in my life ever noticed with my name until this summer) I can get over people being lazy.
But still. Don’t call me “Dan.”
