Call Me Bubba
Today my wife learned that a small contingent of my past life calls me Bubba.
She already found out about Bob. I was Bob from grades 5-12. I came to be Bob because there were four or five Roberts in Mr. Fletcher’s Fifth grade class at Petrova Elementary School in Saranac Lake, NY. One of us had to be Bob. Since I was the new kid anyway, I raised my hand.
That was the beginning of Bob. I didn’t really like it, but it stuck. Later on, in high school I’d get drunk at parties and go on about how my name was universal, spelled the same way forward and backward. You could just keep saying it indefinitely and it would sound like one continuous word. Bobobobobobobobobobobobob and so on.
When I went to college, I became Rob once again. It became my dominant name since my family and college friends were all on the same name-for-Robert page.
Then Bubba came along. It wasn’t even a crazy fraternity pledge name. My friend Kevin told the story about how his high school friend had always wanted a friend he could call Vin, so Kevin volunteered the last part of his name.
My friend Joe wanted a friend he could call Bubba. There was an exchange student or immigrant in his school named Bubbaloo Nadoo, and since that time he’d wanted to have a friend he could call Bubba. So Kevin volunteered me, making the case that I was big, jovial and that the name kind of sounded like that horrible derivative of Robert, but without the ubiquitous universality.
Even though it wasn’t my fraternity pledge name, it spread from my non-fraternity friends quickly to the fraternity and it became my name among that small, elite group for the rest of my college. I didn’t mind. I’ve been called much worse since.
Bubba came back today in the form of an e-mail from my fraternity brother Jamie. I went on my college’s alumni e-mail page and started e-mailing some people I haven’t communicated with in a zillion years. It’s only fitting that Jamie should resurrect the name, I think he was in the room when Bubba was born and may well make some historical revisions to this story.
Since college, it’s been just plain Rob, except for Daddy and a few choice names picked by my ex-wife which, although well-deserved, I don’t care to share here. It fits well with the tradition of anonymity of my recovery group.
It’ll do until the next name comes along.
Filed under: General Observations on August 18th, 2007
Funny how that works, my name is James. My dad’s family used to call me Jamie until I told them to stop after being teased about it being a girls name. My mothers side called me Bubba. I didn’t know that side very well and my mother herself called me James. ffw to highschool first day of class, new school hundreds of miles away, being a big guy get labeled Bubba again. Name sticks to the point that a large number of my friends from that era only know me as Bubba, some thought that was my given name. Now into the adult world, I am James mostly but people from highschool still call me Bubba, Bubs etc.
That leads me to ask the all important question, would a Bubba by any other name smell as sweet?