{"id":17818,"date":"2022-03-17T09:29:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T13:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/?p=17818"},"modified":"2024-08-27T16:57:59","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T20:57:59","slug":"nicknames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/2022\/nicknames\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicknames"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Nicknames\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Nicknames<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our family isn\u2019t much for nicknames: although my father used to call my mother \u201cpuddin\u2019\u201d. It drove my grandmother crazy..\u201ddoesn\u2019t he know your name?\u201d she would say when he called her house.
\nFast forward to the birth of my youngest brother. When he was born I was 12, Steve was 9, Dave was 7 and Mark was 5. We were lying on the living room floor watching Wyatt Earp on the telly, it was black and white in the 50\u2019s. The housekeeper had left, we were in our pj\u2019s waiting for our dad to return from the hospital. The house was warm; we had had our dinner and were so cozy. The sibling skirmishes so common with boys who were like puppies, always wrestling, had abated.
\nWyatt Earp was one of our heroes. At 12 years of age I appreciated how handsome he was and of course always caught the bad guys.
\nThe door opened and cold air swept through the living room; we could hear it close; dad removing his galoshes and hanging up his long, black winter coat, probably sliding his whit silk scarf into the sleeve. A couple of heavy steps and he was standing in the archway to the living room. Our dad was over six feet, tall, dark and handsome, an Errol Flynn look alike. And from our prone positions on the carpet he looked like a giant!
\n\u201cWell \u2026you have a baby brother…What would you like to call him?\u201d Since we had been hoping for a sister and names had been chosen this could be a dilemma.
\nWithout hesitating, resenting our program\u2019s being interrupted, we responded in one voice \u201dWyatt Earp\u201d then turned back to the telly. Dad gave one of his shrugs, laughed and headed to the kitchen for a rye and ginger. Giving birth must have been exhausting for him.
\nMy brothers and I thought that we had been taken seriously, silly us. The newest addition was (unbeknown to us) christened Christopher Charles. But, when he was brought home, all 9 lbs 6oz of him, we called him Wyatt Earp. As time passed the parents humoured us by referring to him as Wyatt Earp as well.. I don\u2019t remember when but at some point it was shortened to Earp or Earpy and he has lived the last 60 years by that name.
\nWhen someone would call the house and ask for Chris, my mom would tell them that they had the wrong number. Over the years people thought his name was Herb or perhaps the speaker had just burped.
\nMy baby brother will always be a brown eyed redhead Earp to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicknames Our family isn\u2019t much for nicknames: although my father used to call my mother \u201cpuddin\u2019\u201d. It drove my grandmother crazy..\u201ddoesn\u2019t he know your name?\u201d she would say when he called her house. Fast forward to the birth of my youngest brother. When he was born I was 12, Steve was 9, Dave was 7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17828,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17818\/revisions\/17828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}