Nicknames

I've never really had any nicknames. I got called "Mulder" for a while in the sixth form (some people thought I looked a bit like Mulder from The X-Files, rather than supermodel Karen Mulder) but that didn't last, apart from one guy (let's call him Kenny Loggins) who would say stuff like "How's Scully?" to me about 5 years after we had finished school, and about 6 years after anyone else ever referenced it. Kenny Loggins had form in this area, as he kept calling one of my friends Derek Terrence (a brief nickname at first school) right through to high school when no-one else could even remember (a) that we'd ever called him Derek Terrence, and (b) why we had ever called him Derek Terrence.

The best nickname I've EVER known anyone to have had was "Two Mouth". This was at high school. Two Mouth was so called because he had a scar across his chin that looked like a sealed up second mouth. Two Mouth also happened to be quite an angry young man, so much so that his other, more commonly used nickname was Vinnie (as in violent, nutcase, testes-grabbing footballer Vinnie Jones). Though you could believe that he would need a second mouth to spout the angry words and views of which he held plenty, which is why I preferred Two Mouth.

Perhaps the worst nickname I've ever come across, and the one I'd want the least, was "Bates". This started at first school for the person involved. Bates's previous nickname was "Skeletor", so I don't know if Bates was an improvement or not. The way I remember it, someone asked him if he knew what "masturbate" was. He lied and said yes (as you always did at first school if someone asked you what something obviously grown up and naughty meant), only for him then to become known as "Masturbates" (or "Master Bates"), then later shortened to just "Bates". By the time we finished high school some 10 years or so later, Bates was still called Bates.

I've not met Two Mouth or Bates in the 18 years since I finished high school and have no idea where they are now or what they are doing with their lives. I don't know if I did see them again if I should still call them "Two Mouth" or "Bates"; I don't know what the statute of limitations on nicknames is but it's probably a lot less than 18 years. I don't know how they feel about the nicknames of their youth; Bates seemed to embrace his at the time whereas Two Mouth tried to insist that people called him Vinnie, sometimes quite violently. I'll probably just call them "Man" or "Dude" if I do run into them.