When I was a kid growing up, I rarely ever got a nickname that stuck. My father used to call me Mouth, but that was hardly endearing and certainly not popular outside of my childhood household. In high school, this kid named Tim, who flunked out of college and ended up bald and working for public works in St. Louis, used to call me Nelson because I had long hair (long and boring origin story not included). That didn’t stick either, mainly because nobody else hated me enough to use the name. And my buddy Jesse used to call me Little Rock. Though only he knew why and he never told so the nickname never stuck. Three nickname opportunities in my years on the planet and not one of them actually attached itself to my persona. What can you do?
On my old baseball team growing up, everyone else had a nickname. We had a Specs and a Stretch and a Lefty and a Hothead. But I was always just plain old Nate. Coach said that in a way that was kind of an honor, as if everyone just thought of me as Nate. Like there could be no Nates before me and all that. I called bullshit on that one, but Coach’s story did make me feel better.
So I understand how Adam “Pacman” Jones is feeling. He volunteered to give away his nickname because the commissioner of the NFL doesn’t like boisterous black people. And now that he’s made a big stink about this, he has decided to let the media know that his nickname change is a front, a big lie meant to appease The Man. His friends and teammates still call him Pacman, he says. And that will not stop.
And I say good for him.
You see, a nickname is more than just something that people call a person. A nickname is, in the broadest sense, an explanation of identity. A nickname is an idea of a person that never goes away, like Herpes, only sometimes more welcome and hardly ever near as physically painful (though, depending on the nickname, they can both cripple your social life). A nickname is an established identity in summary. It’s almost like a line of poetry describing that essential you that never dies.
So why should a man have to give it up?
Is there something inherently bad about Pacman? Is it all the ghost eating? ‘Cause you know those guys had that coming. I mean, I just don’t see why a Pacman by any other name wouldn’t tackle just as hard. It’s just a name, just a word, and it hardly matters to anyone, anywhere, anyway.
And that’s why I make this offer to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell: You can suspend them for being boisterous black people, you can suspend them for drug use and night club shootings and loving strippers and hell, get one or two of them for failing to register a vehicle in the mandatory thirty days from date of purchase. But you cannot, under any circumstances, take away their right to nicknames. That’s like violating free speech.
If Pacman wants to be called Adam “Pregnant Woman Disemboweler” Jones that is his right as an NFL player, as an American and as a human being. And until you actually catch him disemboweling a pregnant woman, there just isn’t any foul there.
Keep on keeping on, Pacman. Somewhere, there’s a Specs and a Stretch and a Lefty reading about your plight and feeling your pain. Preserve your nickname, dude. It’s your right.
And even Jesus “Heavy G” Christ can’t take it away.