The Trouble with Nicknames and "Emoticons"

Now that Child has returned (grudgingly) to school, I am enjoying the quiet moments to look back on our Summer. It was pretty laid back one, which is always good. My goal of no longer being the "Cruise Director" was achieved- thanks to allowing her to have texting privileges. Yes, there were some good times....

I was happy to see Child taking advantage of her free time this Summer by hanging out with a lot of different friends. There was swinging on the playset, hide-and-seek, Twister, and all sorts of fun. On one of these "get togethers", her old pal, "Friend", let it be known that he had a nickname for her. When I was driving Friend and "Twin Bro" home one evening, the two guys were busy cackling-away in the backseat about said moniker. Child was up front with me, kind of shooting me a look like, "Isn't that cool that he came up with that for ME?"

Now, let it be known that Friend is a 13 year-old male. What are 13 year-old males interested in? Hmmm.... video games, Star Trek, stuff like that. So, keeping this in mind, hearing his nickname for my daughter made me visualize a creature from another world with a floor-length robe, pointed ears, and (as the boys pointed out) fangs. Um. Yeah. Anyhoo, Since all of this nuttiness was going on in my presence, I felt that I was entitled to join in:

Mother: "_______, how did you come up with that nickname?"

Friend: "I just sort of came up with it one day."

Mother: "Maybe (Child) should come up with one for you."

Friend: "Sure!"

So, knowing that Friend was waiting to find out what his "secret identity" was destined to be, Child started contemplating the matter at hand. Now, keep in mind that Child is a 12 year-old girl. What are 12 year-old girls interested in? Well, they are interested in a lot of diverse stuff, but they do share a common characteristic of tending to be a bit more sentimental/"mushy" than the average 13 year-old boy. So, after about a day, Child happily announced that she had come to a decision: the 1st part of Friend's name, with "bear" added onto the end. This name fit well into "Girl World", and she was quite pleased with herself.

Now... how to share this information with Friend. Because Friend's name for her was a bit on the "alienistic" side, he had no problem using it freely, in my house/car. Child was aware that hers was more of the "earthly" realm, and decided to inform Friend through her new "fav" mode of communication: text messaging. This, my friends, is the point in the story where the "emoticons" fit in.

For those of you unfamiliar with emoticons, they are various symbols/facial expressions that one can make with the keyboard to convey an emotion to the recipient of a text/e-mail. There are so many, in fact, that there are many dictionaries on line dedicated just to them. A plain old smiley face is pretty blah; people tend to get pretty creative...

So... this is the abridged account of what went down:

Child (texting Friend): "I have a nickname for you. Want to hear it?"

Friend (texting Child): "Yes!"

Child: "Ok. It's ______"

(silence-crickets- silence. Child is dying here. She sends a follow-up text)

Child: "Do you like it?"

Friend: " :3 "

(Child brings over the Pink phone with a perplexed look on her face)

Child: "Mommy, what is " :3 "? What does it mean?!?!"

Mother: "Ummm (looking at the emoticon from all sides), I have no clue."

Child: "I'll text Daddy and ask!"

Child (texting Daddy): "Daddy, what does ":3" mean?"

Daddy (texting Child): "I have no clue. I'll look into it."

(Daddy goes onto the internet, googles ":3", and gets back to an impatient Child)

Daddy: "It's some sort of smiley face, I guess"

( Taking Daddy's response under consideration, Child decides to text a 'Gal Pal' to check)

Child (texting Gal Pal): "What does " :3 " mean?"

Gal Pal (texting Child): "I think it means embarrassed"

Oohhhh.... not the news Child was looking for. After asking three of her 'nearest and dearest', she decided to get brave and ask Friend directly (via text, of course) what he meant by it. Friend, of course, had signed-off and wasn't available. So ended the emoticon/nickname drama...for one day...

Being the clever one, Child decided to try to decipher Friend's response of ":3" by asking him directly (via text) as to whether, or not, he liked the nickname. When he responded, he basically told her that only she could use it; she told him she would never use it in public. Sounds like all was good, huh? Not quite....

So... a lot of text exchanges occurred between Child and Friend w/o any mention of the new name Child created for Friend. A couple of days ago, however, Child used the nickname in a text. When she woke up in the morning, she found that she had a text waiting for her- good thing! Unfortunately, the text was a big 'ol ":C"- bad thing!!!! First, there was ":3"; now there was a ":C"! What is a 12 year-old to do when she finds herself in such a situation? She. cries. a. whole. lot. That is what she does....

A whole day went by with Child being stumped/devestated by an emoticon. Next morning, she took a deep breath, and texted Friend to find out if he was still mad. Friend was surprised that she thought he was mad, as the emoticon was supposed to show that he simply did not like the nickname. Child was confused because she just saw a big 'ol frowny face and thought that it was directed at her in general (we won't even get into the part about the fact that Child felt she had license to use the name under certain conditions in the 1st place...) Well, "all's well that ends well"; the two of them figured it out in the end, and peace was restored to both the "alien" and "earthly" realms...

A couple of great lessons were learned in all of this drama: 1) Teen boys do not respond well to gushy nicknames (stick with the gross, weird, or random), and 2) emoticons can be used as the proverbial "cherry on the sundae"; they should not, however, be the "whole enchilada"of communicating a thought/feeling.