Becky's Boo boos

All my life, I've never suffered from a shortage of nicknames. The first one that I received when I was a wee babe was Boo Boo. You know, Yogi and Boo Boo from Jellystone National Park? I don't know how or why my father associated that name with me. At least I wasn't called "bug" like my older brother. He was caught chewing a stinkbug before he could talk. Father dubbed him "bug." My dad was the originator of most of my nicknames, however endearing or dreadful they are. I liked the name Boo Boo until my family was on a roadtrip and we saw a billboard advertising band-aids; "We make boo-boos go bye-bye." That was the beginning of the not-so-endearing nicknames.

BUGEYE - Yes that is right. An eye of a bug. My next to youngest brother had a hard time pronouncing names. He couldn't say Becky. It came out "Bug-eye." Thus a whole new period of my life filled with insect jokes.

BOOBONIC - As in the plague. My father and I were discussing the medieval period and the plague came up. But instead of saying it correctly, bubonic, pronounced byoobahnick, his tongue slipped and boobonic was born! I was named after a deadly sickness that wiped out 1/3 of the European population!

REBECKY - The name that flowed out of Stacy Tovar's mouth during orchestra. She just combined my official and my preferred names.

BECK - a shortened form of my preferred nickname, which Dad would yell down the stairs to get my attention.

BECK, BECK, BECK, BE-GECK! - When Dad got tired of yelling for me. Or I was not too keen on doing something.

BECKAW! - My freshman roommates were too lazy to get out of their beds to come get me. So they quietly called for me as sweetly as they could. When I didn't answer (because I couldn't hear their minute voices) they tapped into their sugar stores from the wild night before and called for me with a screeching crow and I heard it as Beckaw!

DOE-TAH - (British pronunciation of daughter) a name my father endearingly calls me when I'm overly smothering him with affection.

REBACCAH - rhymes with Chewbacca, the sidekick of Han Solo in the Star Wars series. My friend Chelsea was granted the name Chewbacca and I was Rebaccah by our ever so agitated Sunday School classmate AJ in junior high.

BUCKY - A child I babysat couldn't pronounce my name either. But at least he was nicer than calling me the eye of a bug. Those compound eye things are pretty creepy.

By all means these are not the only names I have been graced with, nor will they be the last. There are most definitely going to be more names in the future. But for now, these are them. Some more endearing than others. And they all started with Boo Boo. And you know what my brothers said, "we make Boo Boos go bye-bye!"