Nicknames I’ve Known and Loved

Two reports in a recent NY Times daily news flash caught my eye because of hilarious nicknames in the headlines. I want to appropriate both of them. I’ve had quite a few affectionate labels applied to me over the years, but I’m ready to add some new ones, ones I’ve selected myself.

The first was a moniker adopted by Priscilla Villarreal, whose colorful posts on Facebook have brought her notoriety. She reports on activity at the Laredo, TX border and calls herself “La Gordiloca,” or “The Crazy Fat Lady”.

My family already thinks of me as The Crazy Cat Lady. My late brother-in-law gave me a sleep shirt years ago with that phrase emblazoned on the front. I still wear it. I’d need to change just one letter to make it match my new nickname. Well, not actually, because the label I really want is La Gordiloca. I’ve been complaining about my weight for years now, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m crazy. Saying this in Spanish would sound sexier.

Moving on to the second item in the Times that day. It had to do with the brilliant pianist in the hit movie Green Book, Dr. Don Shirley. The article by David Hajdu reported on an exchange between two of Dr. Shirley’s friends. They used the initials F. B. in referring to the pianist. It stood for “Funky Butt,” composer Luther Henderson’s nickname for the pianist. Seriously? The article didn’t explain exactly how the term of dubious affection came about. I don’t really care. I want to co-opt it anyway.

I have good reasons to do this. My freshman boyfriend in college called me Bugle Butt. I swear I wasn’t prone to farting, so you can wipe the smirk off your face. That wasn’t the source of the nickname. I weighed about 110 pounds at the time, but I had a lot of junk in the trunk even then. The boyfriend had an unusual talent. He could make sounds like a trumpet just using his lips. I assume that he tried out Trumpet Butt for me first and quickly changed it to the alliterative Bugle Butt.

In my first marriage, I would dance around, singing “la, la-a-a…” and shaking my behind, earning me the pet name Fabulous Fanny, the Famous Flamenco Dancer. My husband even gave me a Steiff mouse dressed as a Spanish señorita for Christmas. Fanny and Bugle Butt don’t have the same allure as the more provocative Funky Butt.

Around the same time, I had a friend I didn’t see often, but we spoke for hours on the phone. Stay with me now. I gave her a white bear that we named Pasha (it somehow looked Russian). It was a companion to my bear, Fanny. When I phoned, I’d identify myself as Fanny Slanders, all set to gossip, and I’d ask how Pasha Galoop was doing.

This brings me around to my very first nickname. My parents called me Suzy Potts. Or at least that’s what I thought it was. Sometime in my twenties I learned what they were really saying. It was tu sei pazzo. In my mother’s southern Italian dialect she pronounced tu like thu. She was saying: “You’re crazy!” That’s my earliest claim to ownership of the “crazy” label.

My mother bestowed other variations of pazzo on me. After I learned what Suzy Potts really meant, my mother migrated to telling me I was pazzo che lupo—(loosely translated as) “what a crazy wolf.” I have no idea why Italians think wolves are crazy, but it works for me. Many Italian jokes using southern dialect feature a man named the Anglicized Pacha Galoop. And that’s how my friend’s bear became Pasha Galoop.

So, now you can see why I’d consider La Gordiloca and Funky Butt a step up in my history of nicknames. Well, Gordiloca anyway. I’m still not sure what makes a butt funky. Until I figure that out, I may just keep that one on hold.

Copyright 2019 Business Theatre Unlimited

In Defense of Legacy

The recent college admissions scandal has brought attention to various ways that applicants get preferential treatment. In the scam, wealthy parents paid huge sums to circumvent normal admissions procedures in order to get their children admitted to select universities. They paid to have sports experience faked and SAT answers changed or even to have someone smarter take the tests.

Students who played fairly and were denied admissions were not the only ones affected by this. The negative fallout from the scandal has also cast a shadow over students who were accepted following the rules but now have folks wondering about them. Several subsequent opinion pieces criticized legal ways to get preferential treatment, particularly legacy admissions.

For some, “legacy” seems to have become a four-letter word. They see it as a way to stack the deck and to prime parents for big donations. They wonder why schools have legacy programs to begin with. In fact, it’s not about elitism; non-elite schools have legacy programs, too. The answer is as simple as family unity, “team” loyalty and chest-thumping, button-bursting pride.

My alma mater, Brown University, is one of the schools known for its legacy admissions. I wasn’t one of them and I’m happy to report that Brown was not one of the schools involved in the scandal. I’ve been active in their fundraising and I have some knowledge about how things work there. I’m speaking out in defense of Brown’s legacy program and legacy admissions in general.

The percentage of Brown legacies that get admitted is not as high as many might expect. Unofficially, Bruno accepts them at roughly three times the rate of non-legacies. Unqualified legacies are not admitted. Moreover, not all legacies come from wealthy families. I know several parents who were so angry because of this that they disengaged from Brown completely. On the flip side, I’ve seen alumni families on campus taking multi-generational photos. Their joy was palpable.

My high school had something called Girls’ Sports Night, with two teams, one for each school color. If you had an older sister, you could choose to be on the same color team as she had been. Others were assigned to a color randomly, by lot. The option was a form of legacy favoritism. I, along with many of my classmates, took advantage of this. It helped promote sibling unity, avoiding rivalry. It also kept parents from having to cheer for two teams, or no team.

Legacy college admissions can promote family unity. Consider the news features about professional football brothers (or coaches) on opposing teams. Their family members sit on a different sideline when the teams meet. Or maybe they move from one side of the field to the other at half time. Without legacy programs, the same would be true of hundreds of parents of college athletes around the country.

Earlier I said that legacy is also about pride. Think about how many people have Junior after their name. Or II or III. Why does a father want his son to carry his same name, and his grandson and so on? It’s because of pride in what that family name signifies, the generations of accomplishments. It’s also the expectation to have Junior carry on traditions. Similarly, Jewish parents often name their babies after deceased relatives. It provides continuity. It’s a way to honor those who have passed and preserve their memory. This custom is also a form of legacy, and a touching one, at that.

Legacy is not a dirty word. Neither are pride or loyalty or unity. Scam and fraud, on the other hand, are. Don’t debase legacy admissions by equating them with the unfair practices exposed in the recent college scandal. Those scams were perpetrated in the shadows. Don’t elevate them by conflating them with legacy programs that have openly promoted family unity for generations.

Copyright 2019 Business Theatre Unlimited

Savoring Small Pleasures

In preparation for retirement, I jettisoned many possessions. Some were more difficult to part with than others. If I had a do-over on my downsizing, I’d approach it differently. After several years in our condo, I’ve begun to accumulate “stuff” again. I realize this contradicts advice from experts and flies in the face of popular tidying up trends.

As part of my downsizing process, I went through multiple closets of clothes, shelves of books, and every nook and cranny in the kitchen and pantry. My collecting long ago jumped the shark to become hoarding. I managed to downsize my collections by getting rid of them in their totality. I couldn’t pick certain items to keep, because I would feel bad for the ones I would be getting rid of.

Not long after our move, I found myself looking for a particular garment that would have been perfect for a certain occasion (funeral, any one?), only to remember it had been donated. Ditto for some book that I hoped to reference. Then there were those cooking utensils, unused for twenty years of marriage, needed for a recipe Jagdish was concocting in our condo. This was further complicated by the fact that I’m still not sure where I stored things after the move, making me wonder whether an item survived the downsizing.

AARP the Magazine had an article by Suze Orman, the financial guru, wherein she provided seven guidelines for a “sunny” retirement. What caught my eye was number 6: Spend Wisely. Orman recommended setting up two buckets, one for needs and one for wants. Then you use each only for what it’s been set up to do. This presumes you’ve done a proper job of estimating your needs so that bucket is adequate. It also assumes that what you consider to be wants (rather than needs) doesn’t change over time. Good luck with that.

When Marie Kondo gives advice on tidying up, she tells us to get rid of the things that don’t bring us joy. She’s focused on folks long before their golden years. With my great purge well in my rear view, I realize that what warmed my heart when I was still working was sometimes different from what gives me pleasure in retirement.

This is partly because I now have time available for what used to be considered frivolous activities—wasted time back then. I’ve learned to savor small pleasures. Not simple pleasures—small pleasures. Little things that wouldn’t even have been on my radar when I was working. I’m discovering classic TV series like Monk that I never watched in their prime. I’m reading more. Many days I take afternoon naps without feeling guilty.

Here’s a shocker. I’ve become a fan of the Dollar Tree. I used to joke about people who shopped there. Now my husband and I are in one a few times each month. I discovered that they sell jigsaw puzzles, a hobby I enjoyed in my preteen years. At first, I bought them as stocking stuffers. Now I do about two puzzles a week myself. A small pleasure with a small price tag.

Then there’s EBay. I didn’t appreciate the appeal of buying there. I did, however, see it as a good place to sell items that brought me joy when I acquired them years ago but no longer give me even a tiny frisson of pleasure. While I was on the site, I did some searching of items for sale, to get a feeling for prices of things I planned to list. Since I was searching anyway, why not check out some Christmas ornaments?

I started thinking of the time doing this as “window shopping” and I could do it for hours. Eventually I started buying one or two ornaments now and then, but only when the prices were low. After all, I’m retired and on a budget. You can guess where this wound up for a person who has four Christmas trees, including two just for her cats. At first I felt a tad guilty about buying things I didn’t need just because I wanted them. But they made me happy. Opening the little shipping boxes was fun.

Suze Orman and Marie Kondo are wrong. Retirees should start their planning by making ample room in their lives—in their budgets, their homes and their schedules—for buying and doing the non-essential things they want. Small pleasures, not expensive ones. “Wasted” time, not productive tasks. Embracing clutter that is emotionally rewarding. If your retirement planning doesn’t allow for this, rejigger your plan. Expect to die sooner, if that’s what makes it work. At least you’ll go out happy! Don’t deprive yourself of small pleasures. Learn to savor them. They’re what will bring you joy.