What Was Your “Apodo” When You Were A Kid?

So I’m walking through the cereal aisle at the grocery store last night and I see one of those impulse-buy displays that hang from the end of the racks; it was a random Loteria display next to the Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

At first I passed it up, then I doubled-back and did what any person in my situation would do, I snapped a picture and posted it on FaceBook. For some reason, right after I pressed the send button, a mental picture of one of my childhood friends seeped into my awareness. I couldn’t, as much as I strained my memory, remember his name. But I did remember we called him El Catrín (I’m often an amused and curious witness to my free-associations).

It didn’t bother me that I couldn’t remember his name; as far as I was concerned his name was El Catrín. I’m sure it had to do with the image of the refined Loteria dandy in smoking jacket and monocle. After that all I could do was push my cart down the aisles while trying to remember my childhood buddies and their nicknames.

We had a veritable menagerie. One of my best buddies had a nose like a sun dial, so big you could tell the time of day off of it. His eyes were set close together and he had the vague appearance of a goat. We called him El Chivo. El Toro was a massive kid for his age who led with his head when he played soccer. El Zorrillo, well…

Don’t ask me to remember their names. But mention La Piola in a casual conversation and I know exactly who you’re talking about – he was a skinny guy who for a while had the habit of setting palm trees on fire.

Nicknames were vital when I was a kid – everyone had one. And I’m not sure if this is specific to Mexican culture, Latin American culture in general or just a human thing. Maybe it has to do with our different social circles and communities and the identities we don with each. We play different parts depending on those around us – family, work, friends, school mates. A nickname is just another very practical and useful way of organizing our identities.

I have a hard time calling my friend Pancho anything else, even though he’s a well respected surgeon and people call him Doctor with reverence.  Some nicknames aren’t that obvious – some are inherited. My older brother had a friend who made the mistake of wearing green shirts to school every day for a week. The man is well in his 50’s and to this day his friends call him El Aguacate (his body shape had something to do with it as well). El Aguacate’s kid brother was my class mate, and by default he became El Aguacatito.

El Zopi was short for El Zopilote – it was a visual thing, you can imagine. He looked nothing like La Lechuza, but they both had an eerie way of hunching-over when they stood still.

I can’t place their names, but I know who they were: El Piolín, El Caballo, Tanín, Talache (his front teeth needed serious cleaning).

Me? For a while some kids gave me an inherited name. My brother was a big kid, stood head and shoulders above everyone else, so they called him King Kong. I didn’t dip into that part of the gene pool, so the name didn’t apply, and King Kongcito was too long for an apodo. They called me chango, but it was short-lived. My come-back to being called chango was a quick your-mama joke riff that always ended in laughter and a good-natured “(insert here a Spanish word that begins with “p'” ends with “e”, and has a “ch” in the middle) Landa.” That’s the one that stuck.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda