mmmmdcclxxviii

We are all incarcerated

inappropriately. I meant
reincarnated. When I was
a child, I was a terrapin. Or
at least that was my father’s
first nickname for me. This
is no extraordinary tale. But
I suppose that this particular
diminutive was transparent,
was, of all of the ones that
would later come, the most
direct nickname of all of the
names that my father called
me over the years. So it was
just the beginning of a trend
of condescending sobriquets
that my dad would anoint me.
And when it came to my father,
as related to me (and we were
definitely related), condescen
sion was most assuredly his
language of choice, it was
something he could (and
would) do, and it was some
thing he most certainly felt
that he could do well. I
don’t recall how it went
exactly, but this trend must
surely have begun when my
father decided, perhaps as
I was doing something he had
asked me to do, to his mind, in
a manner that was too slow for
his particular taste. Perhaps it
was during those sessions that
transpired each day for many
months during the year that
would have been my kinder
garten year—which also
happened to be a year when
kindergarten was not offered in
the smalltown Arkansas school
which I attended from first grade
through twelfth—in which he
somehow used alphabet blocks
to teach me how to read (some
thing for which I cannot but be
immensely grateful). Or maybe,
and perhaps most likely, it had
begun on one of those weekends
or summer days in which I’d have
to go out to whichever pasture
he’d be keeping his cattle that
year, to tend to them, to help 

him build the fences that he 

so perfectly built (most 

often in exchange for the 

use of the pasture). What

ever the case, at some

point he decided I was too
slow, and so, for a while,
I became Terrapin. Of the
later nicknames, each to
his mind surely more
derogatory than the last,
other tales will be spun.
But this is the story of
the first—to my memory,
at any rate—of many a
nickname that my
dad would, over
my childhood
years, conde
scendingly
dub me.