During the later part of the 1998 ultimate season, Skin and Bones began forming an identity. Part of the development of the team included coming up with nicknames for folks to use when calling them from the stack. Some of them came naturally. Winston Ely got tabacco products. McKinley was anything having to do with rocks [since she's a rock star.] Meredith "Le Merde" Martin was everything French. Other folks got nicknames because of their occupations or school studies. I could have easily ended up with a really stupid nickname. Some of Chuck's early emails included tacked-on nicknames for folks that didn't have a good one. I showed up as Jeff "Too Sexy" Flynn. I don't think this came from anything more than Chuck's whim at the moment he was typing. After a bit, I got tired of reading it, so I asked Chuck to come up with a new nickname for me. He went off for a week and came back with an answer.
The next time I saw him, Chuck told me that I was to be "Shiv". As best as I can recall, his reasoning for why went like this:
During the time leading up to Sectionals and Regionals, Skin & Bones developed a real team personality. Everyone was getting to know one another, and we were trying to learn nicknames and establish some plays. It was natural that people started calling each other by their nicknames on occasion, but I didn't really notice the implications of that until the end of a scrimmage against Elves Gone Bad. Someone was calling my name, but I didn't respond. They finally said "Jeff!" emphatically enough to get my attention. My unconscious response had been to assume they were talking to the Elf Jeff, not me. It was the first time I had heard my proper name all day.
Pretty soon it was clear that everyone had naturally taken to using "Shiv". Even people in Corvallis who had known me for two years as "Jeff" quickly took to calling me "Shiv". Now I often introduce myself as Shiv. Recently, one of my housemates even admitted to pausing for a moment to remember my "real" name.
Nicknames are a funny thing. Many people I've asked about theirs do not even remember how they came about. In most cases, they are derivatives or portions of their names (Loops/Loopy, Winny, Oetter, etc.) or came from some trivial incident so far back that it seems silly to continue referring to it (Cowboy, Slam, Snappy, etc.) All I know is that I get a warm little fuzzy when folks call me "Shiv". I like to think that I understand a lot about my world, but I must confess that I understand very little about why I enjoy this moniker as much as I do.