Life Rule #1073: You Can’t Choose Your Own Nickname.

As J got settled in at school, he began talking more and more about the new friends he was making. He gets along very well with both of his roommates–what a relief!–as well as the three guys across the hall and so many others both on his floor and in his classes. A few weeks into the semester we started hearing about various nicknames they were bestowing on each other, and J was hoping he’d get a good one.

In discussing the topic with Jim and me, the three of us agreed that “T-bone” would be a great nickname. If you’re a “Seinfeld” fan, you get it.

We said, “Yeah! You should get your friends to call you T-bone!”

After that, we’d ask practically every time he called if he was successful in claiming his own nickname. He would laugh and say no, he wasn’t.

It turns out that, just like George Costanza, J got his nickname by no fault of his own. By accident, quite literally. About a month ago he was horsing around in the dorm with his friends and someone slammed a door on his pinky finger, causing him to need a visit to the emergency room and five stitches.

That incident was all his friends needed to come up with his new moniker, and now everybody who visits his dorm room knows what to call him. In good fun, of course.