Sydney, circa 1943

     I’ve never had a nickname, at least not one that I’ve given myself or that I’ve used in place of Sydney.  But, as I think about it, numbers of people have taken it upon themselves to call me by something other than Sydney.  (In a good way, I mean.  I don’t know and don’t want to know what else they might be calling me.)
     When I was a little girl, we lived at 1320 Versailles Avenue in Alameda, California.  Across the street, on the corner of Versailles and Encinal was the Encinal Market.  In those days, markets had real butchers and I remember my mom lifting me up so I could watch while he cut and weighed the meat she ordered.  That butcher always called me “Syd-Syd-the-Chinese-Kid.”  Go figure.
      The three down-the-street-neighbor-kids called me “Synney.”  As in when they called “Syn –neeey” out in front of the house to get me to come outside and play.  I always thought they couldn’t pronounce my name correctly, but recently it occurred to me that they were Catholic and maybe they were calling me “Sinney.”
     During that same period of time, probably about fourth grade, while I was at Camp Willapa up here on the peninsula, one of the counselors called me “Skidney.”  I happened to find an abandoned kitten that summer and immediately named him “Skidney” and, unwittingly, took care of changing my own name back to Sydney.  Skidney went home to California with me and proved to be a wonderful and memorable addition to our family.
     The next nickname I remember (and the one that confuses me the most) was given to me by my first husband, my son Charlie’s father.  He called me “Mouse.”  I don’t remember ever being a mousey sort of person.  Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part…
     And then, in the seventies when I moved to Oysterville permanently – in the days when my last name was LaRue and I went to parties wearing long evening dresses with lots of fringe or purple spandex pants – Gordon Schoewe nicknamed me “Boom Boom” usually said right along with my last name, “Boom Boom LaRue.”  When I married Nyel and became Mrs. Stevens, I must have become more dignified because nowadays our friends say, “Remember when we called you Boom Boom?”  Or maybe we all just got old.
     My step-daughter Marta calls me “Sydley.”  She’s the only one who does and it’s the only nickname I feel sentimental about.  Probably because she has called me that for more than fifty years – since she was five or six years old – and in such a way that no one else is invited into the conversation.  I call her “Rooneybobs.”  Don’t ask.
     I’ve been known to correct people when they call me “Syd” – especially if they presume to call me that right after we’ve met.  “You can call me ‘Sydney.’  I’m really not a Syd.”  I had told many people that in my lifetime before I realized that my dad always called me “Syd.”  Curious.  That was who I was to him and who I was to myself when we were together.  Somehow, it wasn’t a nickname at all coming from him.  Curious, indeed.