What's In A Name?

You might be looking at this 3 inch cow (that moos and makes sounds when you squeeze his tummy) and wonder what that has anything to do with my blip name. My current journal name is kind of explained in my profile and my user name is obvious.  That makes for a boring story. So I'm going to go back to my blip origins but you'll have to bear with me.

My first journal name was crinkster's odyssey and my original user name was crinkster54. I eventually changed that to my real name because I felt that being so anonymous was interfering with really getting to know my fellow blippers.  But crinkster...and the cow with a heart as the belly button?

The cow was a gift from Theresa, my college roommate, about 10 years ago.  When I think of Theresa, I think of Linnea, the third of the Three Amigas, which began in an all freshman women's dorm at the State University of New York Fredonia.

Now picture it. August 1972. It's the first day of college classes. As a Music major my first class was Music Theory with Professor Peterson.  Dr. Peterson called the roll.  When he got to me he badly, really horribly mispronounced my last name, something like: crink'-ee-own-ee.   (Correctly pronounced sir-in-see-own'-e)

Linnea hustled back to the dorm and told everyone about it.  From that moment my undergraduate nickname was Crink.  My mom and dad became Mr. & Mrs. Crink, too. The next year, Mary, a transfer with whom we became friends, picked up on it.  My first email address was crink54@... but I was locked  out of my account after it was used to spam 500,000 people.  That was a bummer.  Trying not to stray far from my roots, crinkster was born.  I've gotten away from using it but Mary who lives the good life in Florida still knows me as Crink and Linnea who lives in frigid Minnesota still calls me Crinky.  Theresa, to her credit, always called me Laura.

I can't finish this tale of four friends and a nickname without sharing something we did almost 30 years ago. Having all gone our separate ways across the country we knew there would come a time that something would happen or we would lose touch. So we decided to tell one another that we loved them and always would. It was the best thing I have ever done. It was kinda prophetic. I will never wait to tell that to the people I love because they might not be there tomorrow.

I get a card from Mary at Christmas with a picture of her two children.  No note, no catching up, no calls. We've all lost track of Theresa who was originally from the Bronx and showed me everything  in New York City, took me to see Carol Channing in "Hello, Dolly" on Broadway and humored me every time I visited by going to a baseball game and the Bronx Zoo.  And then there's Linnea, the perpetrator of Crink and the person who promised to sing at my wedding: we still keep in touch, talking at least every couple of months. It warms my heart and makes me smile when she answers the phone and says, "Hi, Crinky!"

Thanks to jensphoto for doing such a great job this month of mono Mondays.  I will be picking up the torch for February.

Sorry, I'm punstoppable!
            If you need an ark I noah guy.