Me Too

On one side of my family, I have one aunt and two uncles.  Those three had a combined eight children.  Throw in my brother and I, and you’re talking about ten cousins.  Since our families all lived in different areas, we would all gather at my grandmother’s house for barbeques, swimming, and fun.

My grandmother thought it would be fun to give us all nicknames, little pet names that she could lovingly call us.  Some of them seemingly made no sense, like “Pah-see-la,” but that’s what struck her fancy.  Some of them, like mine, were based on something we said or did.

My nickname was “Me Too.”  To understand where that came from, you’d have to understand that I’m three years younger than my brother, and at the time, I was the youngest grandchild too.  I looked up to my brother.  He was so much older and wiser than me.  He had lived in this world, so he knew how to navigate those tough decisions, like what kind of ice cream to eat, or what soda someone should drink with barbecued chicken, or whether someone should like squash or not.  I decided early on to follow his lead, so every time my brother would ask my grandmother for something, I would say, “Me too.”  And the name stuck.