Scoots. And Poops.

I've been promising an old friend a post for a while, and since nothing particularly interesting happened today (except for a professor wanting to publish a paper with me...) I think that today's a good day for an old story.

I have written about El Senior's friend Victor before. When El Senor was living with a couple guys during my freshman year, Victor named one of the roommates Mother Goose. Mother Goose earned his name since he was the condo owner and was anal about how the apartment was to be kept. To my understanding, there was a small degree of friction between Victor and Mother Goose. This may have had a lot to do with the fact that once at a BYU football game, when BYU scored a touchdown, Victor grabbed Mother Goose by the sides of his head and planted a kiss squarely on his lips. Mother Goose never quite forgave him.

El Senor's other roommate didn't have a nickname. He asked Victor one day what his nickname was and Victor immediately said, "Scooter." I have no idea why. Scooter was soon shortened to Scoots and told me that it was part of my duty to see that the nickname was implemented. I started calling him Scoots.

One day when their apartment was full of girls, I called him Scoots. One of the girls in particular started to giggle. She said, "That's your nickname? In my house we referred to... something else... as scoots..." All the girls started giggling and Scoots asked us, "What? What did you refer to as Scoots?" I said, "Poops!"

In that instant, his nickname changed from Scoots to Scoots and Poops. One day he admitted to me that every time he heard Scoots and Poops, he had an image of someone scooting across the ground and pooping. He dropped to the ground and started scooting around on the floor on his butt, leaving the pooping to my imagination.

While all of this was going on, Scoots and Poops and Mother Goose decided that I needed a nickname, but we couldn't really come up with one. One day, I was over at the apartment and one of the boys made some funny comment that was dependent on the word "phallic." I laughed along with the rest of them till they all turned on me suddenly.

One of them said, "You don't know what that means! You shouldn't be laughing!"

I said, "Please. I don't know what phallic means? Because it's a man word? That's like me making a joke with the word mammary in it and saying that you shouldn't get it because you don't know what mammary means because it's a woman word."

Scoots and Poops called out, "That's it! That's your new nickname! Mams!"

Mother Goose could never actually bring himself to call me Mams (if he was so traumatized at the idea of calling me Mams, think of how traumatic it was when Victor kissed him). He changed the word to Mums and thus my nicknames for that apartment were born. Scoots and Poops called me Mams. Mother Goose called me Mums. El Senor called me neither.