This Name Ain’t Bound for Glory by B. Lynne Zika

 


This Name Ain’t Bound for Glory
by B. Lynne Zika




Destiny often bows to the force of a name. There are Footes who go into the shoe business and Cutters who become surgeons. In the late ’90s, the Los Angeles Times published “The Name Game,” an article intimating that names possess their own power of nurture over nature. Yet however well Drs. Whitman and Akutagawa presented their case—particularly for the positive effects of nicknames—they were apparently unfamiliar with a certain deadly nicknaming tradition.

The infamous Bubba syndrome has done more to assure the lifelong mediocrity of its victims than all the incidents of kicked-in-the-head-by-a-mule and delivered-by-forceps combined.

Any fellow toting the handle of Bubba is assumed to be either exceptionally dumb or virtually brain dead. His daddy will say, “Bubba, I hope you’ve got sense enough that I don’t have to tell you you’re not supposed to be swimming in that quarry,” to which Bubba can only respond, “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.” His teacher will ask, “How many times have I told you to be here at 8:05?” And Bubba will valiantly reply, “Uh, four?”

Bubba is bound to drink Budweiser, prefer dark meat to white, and marry a woman who will deem him her cross to bear and who will crochet Kleenex box covers for the Christmas bazaar.

Certainly other nicknames carry danger as well. A boy from my hometown—Red Ray—got shot out at the motor lodge (the one with the big red neon arrow) by the husband of a lady in question. Sissy LeFevre suffered for 18 years from Epstein-Barr before she gathered the nerve to ask her doctor why she was tired all the time. Yet Bubba remains the likeliest nickname to consign a man to a tilted cane-bottom chair blocking the C-A of a Co-Cola sign.

You will not find a Bubba on the receiving side of a mahogany desk at First National. He’s probably enjoying a jaw on the front steps with Piggy Harwell and Sidewinder McGraw.

Meanwhile, the bank president’s younger brother, Bubba Cole, is leaning in the shade of the alley nearby, cooling himself with an RC and a dash of Southern Comfort on the side

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