Big Weight

I’ve only had a couple of nicknames in my life. As an infant, my grandmother called me “Puttser,” because of the way I apparently “puttsed” around in my crib. My parents used it affectionately through my childhood. My younger brother, less affectionately. Then came high school. In tenth grade, I played varsity soccer. I was 5’2″ and 105 pounds. One of the juniors looked at me and decided that “Toddler” would do nicely. There was no appeal process. Once a nickname enters circulation, it belongs to the crowd. I carried that one for the rest of the season. The years passed. Last night at the gym, I was finishing a 450-pound squat when one of the employees happened to walk by. He stopped, raised his eyebrows, and exclaimed, “That’s big weight!” There it was: another sobriquet. “Big Weight.” Not officially, of course. He didn’t mean it as a nickname. He was simply reacting to what was on the bar. But nicknames often begin that way. Someone says something offhand, everyone immediately…