over the moon

I trace the origin back to second grade. Unlike 3rd grade, 2nd grade was a memorable year. So much coming-of-age in 2nd grade.

One momentous event of that year happened when a classmate, Ken who went by Kenny at that stage, was passing out... I think it was cartons of milk? Anyone else remember having a mid-morning milk-and-graham-crackers break in school? A sort of second breakfast? Or maybe it was phonics workbooks...

Whatever, I do remember it was Kenny, the chosen one, passing out the goods. He was saying each of our first and last names while handing things out. He got to me and mispronounced my last name as "cow". 

Understandable mistake, if it was, in fact a mistake 🤔

My first name starts with "C" (I know, Abby starts with A, but that's not my real name), and my maiden name rhymed with Cow. So there ya go, Kenny purposely or mistakenly amalgamated my first and last names, my last name came out, "cow".

He and I chuckled, and then got back to the business of 2nd grade.

But darned if the name didn't stick? Not right away, but over the years, "Cow" sort of slowly snowballed. By high school, most all my friends called me Cow.  I found a few signages from one of my HS yearbooks:

I suppose if I'd been overweight or noticeably well endowed, I might have disliked the nickname. But I was not overweight, and, if anything, under-endowed. No, Cow was more of a term of endearment. I will note that none of my boyfriends ever called me Cow, that might've been strange.

I recall other nicknames of classmates: Cuckoo (to this day, we still call him that), Onion, Animal, Fish... Cow was just another in the mix, I didn't give it a whole lot of thought.

I do recall one time it worked in my favor. It was during a girls basketball game. I was a point guard bringing the ball down court when my teammate Ingrid cut toward the basket, a half-step ahead of her defender. With her hand up as a target, she exclaimed "Cow!" to bring my attention to the opportunity.

The girls on the opposing team stopped in their tracks, all, "did she say 'Cow!'? WTF?"

Two points for us!

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:

1. Tell us about a nickname you were given.