A listener shares a story about how she went from hating the nickname her grandmother bestowed on her to regarding it with fondness many years later. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Learning to Love a Nickname”
Here’s a little story about nicknames that comes from Lori Matthews in Fort Worth, Texas.
She said, my favorite grandmother, my maternal grandmother, used to call me Clem Cadiddlehopper.
I absolutely hated it. And knowing that I hated it, my siblings, who were all younger than me, all three of them used to tease me mercilessly in that mocking kid voice.
It turns out Lori’s grandmother died in 1982, and it wasn’t until a decade later that she learned that Clem Kadiddlehopper was actually a character portrayed by comedian Red Skelton, who was one of her grandmother’s favorite performers.
And Lori says, so I went from absolutely detesting the nickname to now I kind of smile fondly and nobody calls me that anymore.
But whenever I hear the name Clem Cadiddlehopper, it kind of warms my heart.
Oh, that’s so lovely. Yeah.
Isn’t that?
That’s nice when you can take something and connect it to the memory of a person that you loved and loved you back.
Yeah.
That’s very good.
Yeah, and when you feel one way about a name that somebody’s given you, and then over time your feelings about it change.
I thought that was a lovely little story.
Red Skelton, for me, has some memories.
My brother and I used to memorize his routines, particularly the stuff he did as the character of the mean little kid.
And we combined them into a character we called Bubba.
And we would do these stupid little routines as Bubba.
Most of it just stolen from Red Skelton.
Oh, man.
Do you remember any of it, dare I ask?
No.
A lot of it sounded like Red Skelton mixed with Beaker from The Muppets.
I’m sure it was terrible.
But we had a great time with it.
Martha and I would love to hear about your nicknames and the stories behind them, 877-929-9673.
