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.
