My nickname growing up was “Smiley,” given to me at summer basketball camp by a guy a came to despise. The name was probably appropriate, considering the wide grin that was seemingly plastered on my face at all times. I was never much of a talker, so the smile was a quiet expression of my shy nature. One of the bullies in my school was using it to mock me and it quickly caught on with the other campers. I was horrified, and remember feeling relieved when camp was over, thinking that I would gladly never hear it again. However, I ran into the guy that coined the name later that summer at a movie, and he began to taunt me again. “Hey, Smileeee, give me a Smiley smile!” or “let’s see that smile, Smileeee.” If he could have only seen the hatred in my eyes but found great delight in drawing out the final vowel in an obnoxious way. Others followed his cruel lead. By the time school started, everyone knew me as “Smiley.” Since then, I’ve been called much worse names in life. 

I think that my fellow classmates thought that it was my given first name or my last name and never realized it was a playful, silly gibe, or the bully’s insult as it was intended, in my mind. Even though the use of the name seemed to anger me, my only reaction was sadly an uncomfortable smile, reinforcing the behavior to others. I never expressed my feelings about its use or confronted anyone who called me such. I saw it as confusing, personally embarrassing, and disrespectful, so I refused to call myself “Smiley.” As a result, I rarely used the phone since no one seemed to remember that my real name was Mike. “Hi, this is Mike.” “Who?”

Mike no longer existed, and smiles weren’t as frequent, as I continued my internal fight against having a stupid nickname. It made me think of the song, “Tears of a Clown.” In retrospect, I could have simply adopted the name. At least other classmates knew who I was, when I could have been just another Mike. It was so well known that I could have probably won a school election, or better yet created my own “Smiley” face and capitalized on its marketing. Instead, I cringed every time someone used that reference, and envisioned putting a bloody smile on its inventor’s face. 

All these years later, I still run across former classmates who knew me as “Smiley,” and by habit call me such. At one point in my first marriage, my wife and I owned a golden retriever that we named Smiley. It somehow seemed more appropriate for a pet and ended my nickname torment. If friends came to our house and called for “Smiley,” they usually got a friendly, wet tongue and a lapful of fur. It made me smile, again!