November 13, 2006

On the Origin of Dr. Church

Keeping with the established tradition within the NU ring of blogs - I plan to avoid real names in my Musings. Our main assumption is that one of us may be famous one day. And we'd hate for there to be printed records of our absurd claims regarding...whatever. I mean, say in 25 years it's down to me and one other fellow to be named the first person to walk on Mars (not entirely impossible - I am after all an Aerospace Engineer). But then someone stumbles across, let's say, a debate about the Lord's hypothetical effectiveness as a wingman and does not see the humor in the debate but only blasphemy (also possible). They subsequently vote against me as a candidate to walk on Mars (kinda like what happened to Jodie Foster in Contact) and I am bummed and curse the day my identity was revealed in the blogodrome. Thus the nicknames used from here out are for your and my protection.

I have had many nicknames over the course of my life. Let's discuss some of them. Roughly chronologically...

Geronimo: My mom has called me this as long as I can remember. Not really sure why honestly. But to learn more about Geronimo, Wikipedia is where it's at.

Jared Lee from Tennessee: Ok, I know I've just broken from my rule of secret identity...but...uh...you still don't know my last name. Anyway this was another nickname my mom called me. It works only on the level that it rhymes. I am not from Tennessee. I was born in Texas. But I am dating a girl from TN, so... that's a step in the right direction I guess.

Jar-head: This was primarily the work of my brother when we were younger. I used to hate it. I'm still not fond of it. Besides, I grew up in the 80s. So if anything - due to the flat-top hair cut I likely sported - I was more a box-head than a jar-head.

DrumMan15: My first IM screen name. Hard to believe it's been almost a decade since direct human interaction became unnecessary.

JayRod: (Also: J-Rod, J-Man, J-rizzo, J, or most recently J-bomb) These should be pretty self explanatory. Uninspired - perhaps (except J-bomb). Catchy and fun - definitely. JayRod has been my preferred spelling since its introduction via my second IM screen name JayRodNU.

Texas Girl: Ok, not many people actually call me this (thank God). But for the last three years I've been driving a blue Tercel named Tracy. She used to be my sister's car...thus the license plate: TXGRL85. I've taken plenty of slack for it - let me tell you. But I'm too lazy and poor to change it.

Sergio: The story behind Sergio is a fun one. I was in love with this Panamanian girl for about two years. It was one of those unfortunate, torturing situations (which I have found myself in a number of times) where we were very close friends the whole time. I pined away silently, she pretended not to know how I felt. Anyway. The first 6 months of our friendship she had a long-distance boyfriend called Alejandro (though his nickname was Baboo hehe). My friends decided there was no way I could compete with this guy with my stupid name. We had to come up with a more suave sounding one. Thus Sergio was born. Just so you're not left wondering - it didn't help any.

Dr. Church: Clearly this is one of my favorites. I was dubbed with this nickname my senior year at Northwestern by the members of Boomshaka. I actually wasn't even there when it happened so I don't entirely know how it was conceived. However I'm fairly certain it was a consequence of consistently being late to Sunday rehearsals due to my attending church. That, probably coupled with the fact that I was one of very few (only?) engineers in the performance group at the time. Alls I know is, it's a pretty great nickname and I'm keeping it.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. And this post is probably too long to have kept an audience. Peace out.

2 comments:

Megs said...

Jared, Jared, Jared, you'll blog on this thingy, but boycott myspace? Sheesh! Just teasing. Yes, I must state that I thoroughly enjoyed your blog about nicknames! You have inspired me...to do what, I don't know, but you have and that's what counts.
~Meggles...aka, the girl you used to chase around the neighborhood
P.S. I'll have you know that I had to sign up for this blog thing to send you a comment. I don't even know what this website is.

Hal said...

Actually, you should be able to comment if you have a google/gmail account.

I don't know any nicknames I'd have given you.

Well, none that I'd say to your face ;-)