The pseudonym Nickie was bestowed upon me by… I have no idea actually. There wasn’t much use of my given name, Nicole, in non-official circumstances until some time in junior high school. Official referring to a large array of situations ranging from botched boarder crossings to an agitated mother who uses the entire tri-nomial in extreme cases. Upon giving your child a handle doesn’t it seem prudent to stop and ruminate on the implications of said name?

Rhyming is the most basic - applying the term basic in every meaning possible - linguistic escapade that trickles in from the dark corners of the mind. Does Nickie rhyme with anything appealing to a pre-adolescent Homo sapien? Roll it over a few times and see what you come up with. I’m wagering a red shoelace and half a pack of cigarettes that there’s nothing complimentary to a pubescent individual that comes to mind in the first five seconds. Upon hearing a name we automatically run it through our own mental relational program to shape and attach it to something that we can remember whether it’s via flattery or humiliation.

The taunting was minor among my cohorts until vocabularies expanded and launched into new realms including words that relate to anatomy, sexuality, texture, and any combination therein. It just so happens that when a concept is new we try to apply it to as many aspects of life as possible. I must have had some grasp on that from an early age since, in the name of minimizing the possibilities of mockery, it became clear to me in the first inklings of adolescence that I needed to revert to my given name. Besides, only strippers are named Nickie.

Nicole “Nickie” Rane Edmison
Oakland, CA