What's In a Name?

We were at my parents' for Easter, and my dad was telling stories. This doesn't happen much, as he is one of those guys who saves his words for when he is really pissed off. And then they are spectacular curse words that I have heard uttered only by the mouths of soldiers in combat. So his stories warrant listeners hanging on his every word.

He was talking about my grandfather, his dad, the one who died before I was born. Yet another reason I pricked up my ears. I don't know much about him, and have seen very few pictures. The one that is burned in my memory is him sitting at my Grandma Caliendo's kitchen table in a ratty fishing hat holding up a bottle of Peroni, as if to salute the old country. He has a round face and a bulbous nose, kinda like mine. He was Italian to the core, and I guess that is where my dad gets his sense of pride in his heritage. Or maybe it's just an Italian thing.

So, apparently my grandfather had a bunch of friends, but no one knew their real names. The nicknames they had struck me as pretty racist: Blackie, Sheik, Spaghetti, etc. My mom butted in to inform me that Blackie wasn't black or "moulinjan" as the Italians call them. I cringed, realizing how archaic my parents sound. I wondered if Sheik was middle-eastern or if he just looked it. I wonder if Spaghetti was a skinny Italian (Do they make such a thing?)

My dad answered the question that was chugging through my brain: what do you call the wives if you don't know these guys' real names? He didn't want to be disrespectful as a kid. In those days, it was punishable by beating or worse. So when Spaghetti and his wife came to dinner, my old man, in all his little kid glory, addressed the wife of his father's friend as "Mrs. Spaghetti." I don't know if this was met with smirks or laughter or if that was indeed what she preferred to be called. That was the end of the story, and I didn't feel like it was appropriate to ask questions. They would have most likely been met with the raised-eyebrow glare my dad is so famous for, the one Brian says I have down almost perfectly.

I just know now that some of the things that my own children say must be inheirited. Because I'm guessing that even if they don't say it, Booga's wife is "Mrs. Booga" to them. At least they are smart enough not to address her directly.