Jennifer or Wacker-Doo?

I have been thinking a great deal about nicknames recently.  They are a profoundly interesting and rather personal topic when one really considers them.  Names are powerful, such a core part of our identity.  Call me Jenn, call me Jennifer, but do not ever call me Jenny.  I do not identify with Jenny.  Not that it is a bad name, it is a perfectly wonderful name, but not mine.  However, someone calling me Jenn or Jenny makes sense, as it is simply the shortened version of my full name.  Nick-names though.  Nick-names are frequently illogical, ridiculous, funny and often only understood by the giver, the reciever and a few close others.  Then there are the nick-names between lovers... now that is something to talk about!  I love the moment, when surrounded by friends, that someone let's the cute, often very entertaining, nick-name of their significant other slip.  I think what intriques me most about nick-names is the story behind them, as strange as they may be.  I also adore that most nick-names stem from a love and a closeness between those who speak and know the name.

When I was born, for reasons I will never know, my dad began calling me, Jenny Wacker Doo-Doo.  Okay, I know am already contradicting myself, I said that I do not identify with Jenny, I don't.  Except for this one circumstance, when my dad (or my mom who also took to calling me by the name) would call me Jenny Wacker Doo-Doo. When I would ask my dad about this nick-name and how it came to be his response did not have the clever story I was expecting, just love.  The story goes that shortly after I was born he was holding me, cooing and those were the words that came out and they stuck.  Throughout my childhood and growing up my nick-name eventually took on the suedo forms of Wacker Doo or Wacker.  Most of the time it was endearing and said with love.  However, there were those times when I got older (and too cool) for friends to know me as Wacker that he would throw it out there for the world to hear.  He did it because he could and he loved seeing that look of disgust on my face that he would go and embarass me like that infront of my friends...the way only a dad can. 

My immediate family calls me by the nick-name too, but really it was my nick-name from dad.  It was just another little way that I knew how much I was loved.  It was a name that continued throughout my childhood and adulthood.  Even at 26 years old, I would walk into the house and with the same unwavering love in his voice I would be greeted with some form of Jenny Wacker Doo-Doo. There have been moments recently where I can so perfectly hear... it makes me smile... it makes me cry.   I know that I will forever be his Jenny Wacker.  It makes me, me.