Whats in a Name : Pineapple

     My family already knows why I sometimes use the nickname Pineapple, even if it is not something I am called.  When I started the blog a couple years ago I had no idea what to call it so I fell back on the old standby.

     When I was in high school,  I was pretty much a loner, with just a few close friends.  I didn't participate in many activities like sports or band.  My extracurricular thing was French Club, and I did that just because I had a crush on a couple guy friends.  I wasn't outspoken, and if you asked people from my graduating class if they remembered Marcy, I am pretty sure that most of them wouldn't, even if you showed them picture.  I mastered the art of invisibility, and for someone as awkward as I was, invisibility was a comfort!

However, if you asked some if they remember Pineapple, I am betting at least a few would.

     In my senior year we were required to take P.E.  Many of the girls in class refused to participate because they didn't want to get sweaty, and they definitely didn't want to use the showers.  I  really liked PE though, and  I put in a lot of effort, whether it was basketball, volleyball or flag football. I did manage to piss off a few boys in flag football because they just didn't pay me any mind until I yanked their flag. (Ahem, behave.) The only thing I wasn't crazy about was running the mile. However, in good Marcy fashion, I did try my hardest.

      One of those mile runs was the reason I got the nickname I  would keep for the rest of  the school year.  To say that I didn't have much of a style sense would be like saying  Jay Leno has kind of a big chin.  My choices for gym clothes weren't  the best, and I just grabbed something from the drawer and threw it in the bag.  Today kids get gym clothes, and how much less entertaining that year would have been if I had worn  athletic shorts.  In the eighties, you could  get away with wearing anything.  And on this day, I went to PE wearing thin cotton shorts and matching shirt that had fruit all over them.  You  read that right.  Think cherries, apples, bananas grapes, oh and yeah, pineapples. 

These are not my shorts, but close enough to gag.

     The class began normally.  I started in the back, because that's just what I do.  The athletic types were up front and  as we were running, many of the girls just  walked, so they fell behind.  I  am stubborn, so even if I had to jog  slowly,  I was going to do that mile. I wasn't really that heavy back then, but I was sturdy and strong and bigger than a lot of the little southern belles I shared that class with.  More than halfway through the mile, embarrassingly, the athletics had just about lapped me.  

     As three or four boys approached my lonely self from behind,   I suddenly became the center of attention.  When a girl  with some badonka-donk runs the mile, there is action back there. And if you wear thin cotton shorts, its pretty hard to hide the action.  What happened was that  the fruit on my shorts was moving right along with the rest of me, and that caught the boys attention. I could have stopped and let them pass me, but oh I am a stubborn one, and that was NOT going to happen!  As much as I  tried to be invisible,  I was not going to let this keep me from finishing.   I kept hearing the boys calling out the different fruit on my ass.  I can tell you one thing, as red as my face felt, I think I am glad that they could only see the back side of me!  And as for the pineapple, well, it was the fruit that was right in the middle of my butt.  It could have been worse.  As  I finished the race, a different boy who had already completed the mile cheered me on to the finish with a , "Way to go Butterball!"   That nickname would have sucked.  

     After that day the same boys, when they would see me in the hall, or when I would walk into class, would call me "Pineapple"  dragging out the first syllable. It stopped being embarrassing  after a couple weeks. I had an English teacher who turned the tables on one boy when I was absent from class.  She asked him why they called me that, and after he explained my fruity shorts,  she commented on his checking out my butt.  This was a football player, so that shut him up!  I had one friend in that class and  she couldn't wait to call me and share how red faced HE was!

   So that is how I got the nickname Pineapple.  For me it was probably one of the few memorable moments in high school,  and even though no one called me that after I graduated, I used the small  image pineapple as a signature on my artwork.