Day 342: Black Crayon is My Name

by claire a. williams, Claire@trippingonwords.com

I have had some bad nicknames in my day. On the first day of college in 2000, the day I met Lara, we did a freshmen dorm exercise in which we shared our nicknames. My idiotic high school nickname, "Pony", made Lara cringe. It still does. My family nickname, which comes from my brother, who has only called me Claire a handful of times in his life, is "Sis." This is because, expectedly, I am his sister.

Here at Tumaini, though, I have developed a nickname that leaves these other nicknames leagues behind. My nickname is Black Crayon.

This nickname can be used in such sentences as, "I am coming from school Black Crayon!", "It is raining Black Crayon!", or even: "Black Crayon I do not want to run this day!"

There are many reasons why this is a bad nickname, including the fact that it three times as long syllable-wise as my original name, that it makes no sense, and that it brings up the fascinating and infamous political incorrectness discussion of how children of the 1980s all had a peachy color crayon called "Flesh" in their Crayola boxes.

However, the best reason that Black Crayon is a bad nickname is because it somehow derives from the fact that when the kids here say the word "Claire" it comes across as something like "Crayon."

Thus began the orphans' unmatched witticism.