Today is my older brother Sweetums' birthday. Sweetums' nickname was bestowed upon him by our super-snarky sister, who, when mom made a comment that 'your brother would never cut class', sneered, 'he's so perfect, he's just a sweetums, Sweetums is just perfect'. After the hilarity of Sweetums unexpectedly coming home from college a day early ('I bagged a couple of classes so I could get a ride down') immediately after mom said he'd never cut class, there was a general meeting of the minds... 'you know, she's right, he IS perfect, he really IS a sweetums.' The name stuck, often shortened to the monosyllable 'Tums'.
Sweetums has always been a good role model, ever since he was a young boy. You could do well in life if you asked yourself 'What Would Sweetums Do?' and acted accordingly. He has always been a great older brother, he still is... after all, he is still Sweetums, always has been Just ask our sister, she'd admit it, without a hint of snark.
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2 comments:
that's a great story, on how he acquired his sobriquet
an allegedly true story featuring the name i have adopted as my web handle goes as follows:
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Aunt Caroline Dye, the "gypsy" in the St. Louis Blues
from an article in Southern Quarterly, 1969, by John Quincy Wolf:
According to another story, Aunt Caroline showed powers of prophecy when she was a child. Born into a family of slaves, she had the knack of making predictions that somehow came true and of making lucky guesses that attracted attention on the plantation. But no one thought much about her until Thanksgiving Day, 1865. The master of the plantation had a brother, Charley, who had been reported killed in the War in '61. On Thanksgiving morning, 1865, when the table was set for the big dinner at which the family would celebrate its reunion, Caroline, then about ten years old, told the women of the house hold that they hadn't set enough plates. They counted and the mistress assured Caroline that the number was correct. But the child remonstrated: "You ain' got a place for Mistah Charley." She was reminded that Uncle Charley had been killed four years ago. Yet she still maintained that "he's coming to dinner today."
The family had just started eating when they heard footsteps in the hall, and a very tired Uncle Charley walked into the room. He said that he had been severely wounded in '61, taken prisoner, and kept in a prison hospital until after Appomattox. He had written letters but they had evidently been destroyed at the prison or lost in transit. The family thought he might have been in the neighborhood for several days before Thanksgiving and that Caroline had learned of his arrival. But he assured them that he came straight from the prison and had spent the preceding night twenty-five miles away.
The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection, Lyon College
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you may note a certain parallel in the stories - a person is spoken of, and then unexpectedly arrives at a family gathering
i regard this parallelism of anecdotes (as well as aunt caroline's prophecy of mistah charley's arrival for thanksgiving) as an example of synchronicity, and believe that if such things happen in non-chance ways it implies that there are connections that link time and space in non-obvious ways
as gustav fechner said, of all miracles, the greatest is that anything exists at all
may your brother, and those dear to him, have many more great days
Thanks, old chum.
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