I graduated from college 15 years ago, but I won’t be going to my class reunion next week. Why not? Because the only people I’d care to see are people I have regular contact with anyway.
My freshman year roommate, Jon Granberg, and I discussed this last Friday, when we met in Stevens Point for dinner when he was in town for a wedding the next day. He jokingly asked whether or not I’d be attending the reunion in Ripon, already knowing the answer. “That’s as likely as you going,” I answered, strongly suspecting he hadn’t made plans to attend.
Both of us agreed attending the reunion would be a waste of time because the college friends we’d want to see are people we already have contact with regularly, and the others there would just be people we’d struggle to remember. I’m terrible with names, so most likely I’d have to rely on having my wife introduce herself and asking for their names – a technique that has worked wonders for me over the years.
The only way I’d remember any of these people would be if my friends and I would have had nicknames for them. We amused ourselves greatly by coming up with nicknames for people. Those nicknames, and some of the stories behind them, include:
“Zeus,” who actually nicknamed himself. A senior when I was a freshman in 1993, Zeus didn’t receive his diploma until 1997, when I received mine. A self-proclaimed Greek god, Zeus had a mullet, wore neon shoes and wrote short stories about war machines pulled by giant teams of elephants. Once, I called him, proclaiming myself Apollo and telling him the campus wasn’t big enough for two gods. Even today, my friends and I can spend hours talking about him.
“I Brought This Sign Because I Like Miller,” who lived on my floor my freshman year. He received this nickname because, in introducing himself to the rest of the floor during an orientation exercise in which each guy had to bring an item describing him, he brought a Miller High Life sign and said those words, and nothing else. It fit him perfectly, as he really did like Miller and he was a man of few words. This was especially evident in history class, when he received a failing grade for plagiarizing a paper. He may have gotten away with it, but the professor noted it’s hard to do when you plagiarize the wrong assignment and hand it in.
“Pimp Daddy,” who liked to hang out with the ladies, despite them being completely oblivious to his presence. Pimp Daddy had a big head, which seemed twice the size of a normal person’s head, and he enjoyed running around in his pajamas. The group of girls he hung out with – which we dubbed “The Goodie Goodie Girls” for being, well, rather wholesome – didn’t even know he was there, despite our claims he enjoyed their company on a regular basis.
“Tinted,” who wore tinted glasses, thus earning him the nickname. Tinted was a really nice guy, but his tinted glasses made him appear as though he was always wearing sunglasses all the time. He was tragically killed in a farm accident a few years ago, but my friends and I will always remember him for his glasses.
“Triangle Circle Square,” who was in an art history class with me and several other friends. We had to sign in every class, and he signed in using a triangle, circle and square. We never understood why, and although I remember little else about him, he forever became known as the three-shape guy.
“Dad Woman,” who shared a dorm room with a much older guy. He was most likely her boyfriend, but we theorized it could have been her homeless dad.
The king of all nicknames, though, was Granberg himself. A little guy who liked to make fun of himself, we came up with nicknames for him on practically a daily basis, most of which he laughed at, making him one of the best sports I’ve ever known. Some of them, which I’m not going to bother explaining, included “Hey Sterling,” “The Little Red Guy in the Back of the Class,” “Heather Speaks of Eating Granberg,” “Granny,” “Graaaaaaaaaaaanbeeeeeeeeeeeeerg,” “Granberg Standing Outside in His Underwear,” “The Hamburglar” and a host of others I can’t print in a newspaper.
Granberg was smart enough to know we came up with nicknames for him because we liked him, and to protest would only take away from our fun with him. So he went along with the nicknames, as well as the practical jokes we pulled on him – most of which included late-night prank calls to him pretending to be characters spoofing on his various nicknames, such as Sterling Sharpe, an officer from the Milwaukee Police Department and the girl named Heather.
He was absolutely correct to realize the nicknames were sort of terms of endearment, as the people we didn’t like didn’t have nicknames or were simply known as jerks. For example, a guy from Minnesota was simply known as the biggest jerk on campus, and this guy’s girlfriend was known as the girl who dated the biggest jerk on campus.
Fifteen years after graduation, my friends and I still love talking about the nicknames we came up with in college. Going to a reunion may give us more fodder, but I’m more than happy to keep the memories as they were.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, June 22, 2012.
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