The
other thing a summer of latch-key MTV scholarship taught my friend
was that every cool group of friends went by nicknames. This would
help to reinforce the idea of insiders and outsiders and show a deep
level of shared experience. There were only the two of us that
usually hung out and we had not really generate the desire in others
to penetrate our inner circle so using nicknames to exclude them made
no sense. We also had very little shared experience which would have
lead organically to a descriptive and evocative nickname. He had
already chosen the names we were going to have without my input, he
was going to be 'Styles' and I was going to be 'Roach'. I think it is
pretty easy to tell from these names who was supposed to be the cool
one and who was the wacky/dirty one. He told me we would be calling
me 'Roach' because I was crazy. What neither of us knew was that
'Roach' was marijuana slang, I just knew it was a dirty bug. I was
immediately uncomfortable with my bestowed nickname and its
implication. My friend started telling people around us in the hall
that we were going by nicknames now and I almost immediately denying
that. I generally sold out my dignity quite freely but this was
different because it was not to make people laugh or to talk to girls
this was just stupid and it made me nervous at a fundamental level. I
stopped him and made sure I made eye contact and told him in no
uncertain terms that I would not be going by any nick name and I
would not call him by one. I must have had that end-of-story look
because he just said 'okay' in a sheepish way. He never mentioned a
nickname again and I never really got one except for the 'PumpkinHead' one, and being called 'Professor' as an insult.
