everybody else had nicknames growing up. and they were all undeserved. just lazy and unimaginative cruelty, perhaps.
there was piss pants. and syrup nose. and there was lazy eyed man-ceb. we called him that after a wise ass, himself called pot for his annoyingly clangy voice, made a stinging remark that one of man-ceb's left eye was looking toward the city of manila and the right one towards its southern counterpart, cebu.
but strangely, i never earned one. and i was an easy target. i had big eyes, rounder and more bugged out than ordinary asian kids. and i was dumpy, definitely.
among other things, i only have my mother to blame. she was a stern woman and never shy to let anyone in the neighborhood know about it. just her stentorian voice summoning me for dinner would make my other playmates go scampering back home, as well.
going for my laundry late afternoon yesterday, preschool kids of mostly spanish speaking mothers were ruling the place. the kids, native english speakers themselves, were ultimately calling each others names.
a pudgy one was called fat back. one wiry girl was stinky pinky. and another hefty girl (god, aren't all kids nowadays chunkies?) was called turtle ass.
as i was folding my boxers, the last in my batch, another kid, towed by her mother, lighted up when she saw some of her friends running amok in the laundromat. before her mother could have her ten dollar bill broken to quarters, the kid was well on her way towards the group. i believe she was called dish and i couldn't come up with any reason why.
and throughout their running around, their non-games, everyone seemed to know their places. fat back seemed content with her heft and stinky pinky was, to me, looked happy with her appendages.
as i dragged my rusty laundry cart back to my apartment, i couldn't help but feel smug for my ostensible good fortune of not being called any nasty name while growing up. but just before my building, someone unfamiliar accosted me. he recoiled upon realizing he mistook me for someone else.
"i'm sorry," the guy said. "i thought you were that other chinese guy from that building."
huffing and puffing with my 20 pounds of laundry up the steep walkup to my unit, i was now fuming as well. not with the hapless clueless guy but with my cowed childhood playmates.
had they stood their ground, blocked out my hovering mother and gave me a lackluster nickname, there'd be less confusion today as to my place in life, my identity.
"look," i would have gladly told that spaced out street cat, "how dare you not know me. don't you know i'm frog eyes?"