July 26, 2007

  • HOW LEE BECAME SKI

    I heard that one of my former colleagues, Lee, passed away while we were living overseas. His bad smoking habit finally caught up with him (not to mention his weight and diabetes; I hate the addiction nicotine causes); man, the laughs we used to share.  I used to affectionately call him 'Ski' having given him that nickname thru a process I call nomenclature regression.  So, how did it happen?


    As I recall, the first nickname I gave Lee was 'El' as in his first initial, the 12th letter in the alphabet, the Chicago subway, and the Spanish article. 'El' happened to rhyme with his last name and had a nice ring to it and I called him that for some time. The seasons changed and so did his name, which took on a Slavic personality: 'Elski' also sounded nice but eventually proved to be too long to pronounce, so I shortened it to 'Ski.' Sure enough, the name stuck even though many of his new coworkers didn't have a clue to its origin. Yeah, I miss Ski.