{Preemptive warning: Timestamps may seem out of line...'cause they are. I added some things I remembered inbetween some other things to keep the discussion about the past chronologically sound.}
Now for the spinning wheel of topic picking (in my head) to choose something
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Apparently "Nicknames and/or I've had/used" is what it landed on. Alrighty then.
[12:00]The first one I really remember was, embarrassingly enough, "Quick-dry Cement Butt" which came about when I was the king of that game on the schoolgrounds where you go down slides and try to stay on the bottom for as long as possible until you get knocked off. I was both great at knocking people off and staying at the bottom for the longest. The other children cried out in fear when they saw that I was up next. I ruled that playground game with a...cement butt....
I had a lot of other nicknames during my schoolhood life, but most of them didn't stick. Apparently "Cam" is an easy name to make nicknames out of because there are so many words/phrases that have "cam" in them. I definitely remember being called "camcorder" a bunch, along with "camshaft" and "Cameroon" (which was often followed by asking how my civil war was going) and "camaro" and "camel" etc. You get the picture, basically any word that starts with "cam" I got called at least once.
Following the "Everything 'cam' related" phase, we start to get into more creative nicknames. Nothing really stuck though, "Cam" is easy enough to say without needing a nickname, though I still occasionally bring up that I'm known in some circles as the "Garbage Cam" 'cause I'll finish whatever food other people can't/won't and I've got a strong constitution with regards to food. Heck, that came up on Friday when I was out having dinner with some friends and they had excess fries. I didn't even say anything, just a sly plate slide and a "Garbage Cam?" said fairly quietly. I then proceeded to help him finish the fries. A slight variation of this nickname was "Hoover" like the vacuum, also because I'd eat other people's unfinished food. What can I say? I like food.
[1:40] The highschool nickname that I've gotten the most use out of is "Camero the Artist" which came about from a couple of different sources. The "Camero" came about when it was my birthday and on my highschool's TV announcements, which they show birthdays on, my name was either cut off or just plain spelt wrong. Cutting off happens a lot, what with the 15 character last name, but that normally only happened when last names were placed first, which the birthday list wasn't. The "artist" part appeared when a gym teacher stated something along the lines of "You look like an artist with that long hair" (my hair was kind of unreasonably long, but I liked it at the time), and with that "Camero the Artist" was born. I still use that as my hotmail account, and a shortened version of it is what a lot of my random "sign up for something on the internet" accounts end up being, but I'm not really an artist, I don't spend enough time on it to really claim to be one. I can draw to an extent, I just don't do it that frequently (speaking of, I should really try to work on that...as I say almost every blog post...). So yeah, that one, the good old Camtist...which could be another derivative and I might look into that.
[1:00]There was a good chunk of time when I was actually almost literally "Captain Obvious" too because I'd make what is now considered silly and then considered overtly obvious statements about goings on and things that should be common sense. I wasn't exactly the most socially adept kid/teenager. Actually pretty close to the opposite of socially adept. Sure, I had friends and could potentially fit in anywhere, but dang was I awkward and cold and a know it all. I mustn't've been all that nice to hang around with...though I think I'm just remembering the bad awkward stuff right now and now all the positive good things, as is the brain's forte. Remember the mistakes to learn from them and never repeat them again, positive interactions leave little impact because you didn't need to take much away from it. Crap, I'm getting philosophical again, I should stop (and also I didn't know where I was headed)
[12:30] Further down the road, once out of highschool and well on my way to establishing my lack of care for what people think about me, I found myself acquiring not nicknames but unofficial titles. The two I'm most proud of are "Heart of the Dance Floor" and "Knower of Things." Becoming that which convinces the crowd to join in and wedding dance was great fun. Just going nuts and not caring a lick about what anyone might think got a ton of people more relaxed and carefree. It's a wedding! Have fun! Who cares what you look like, celebrate! (side note: this feels awfully familiar, I think I've talked about this in the past...) [1:10]"Knower of Things" came about because I have just way too much miscellaneous information tucked away in my head, about all sorts of random things. There's no reason for this vast expanse of trivial information, but it's there and it just kinda happens sometimes, so when random things pop out of my mouth and people are like "how do you know that?" I just kinda shrug and go "I just do" (which isn't exactly a helpful response, to be frank).
[1:15] This brings me to the point where self-appointed nicknames became a thing for me. They're mostly due to online gaming where you probably don't want to share your real name so you make one up. My current longest running "in-game-name" (IGN) or "handle" or whatever the kids these days call them is "Vantox" which is the name of most of my first characters in any new game I try. I'm also the kind of guy who sticks with his first character for long periods of time, so I've been known as Vantox online since 2007ish. It's pretty regularly shortened to "Tox" and not "Van" (because who'd want to be know as Van, like the automobile, and also there were like 3 other Van-somethings in my first WoW guild and as I gained rank I wanted to distinguish myself from them, leading to my first truely self imposed nickname), and I do tend to use that as a basis for alternate rarely used characters (for example: Toxhoof the cowman, Toxblin the goblin and several other uncreative names) so my current online "nickname" would be Tox.
[1:35] On the great wide interwebs, when I'm not going by either of Cam or Tox (or camerodart, a derivative of camero the artist) I tend to combine the two into a shocking new name: Camtox. Yes. Super shocking, I know. You can pick your jaw up from the floor now. Who would've thought that I could take two words and put them together to make another word? No one, that's who. Sarcasm aside, I like how it sounds and it's the amalgam of both worlds I reside in, so as my worlds have been merging together my names have followed suit. People can still call me either of my most prevalent names (Cam and Tox) and still be totally accurate. I may end up changing my whole online presence to represent it, too. I dunno yet, I haven't gotten around to actually doing things online that people might want to see, though plans/projects are slowly in the works. I just work so much better when I'm by myself and not expecting anyone to show up, so I may have to find a place to record where I can just do my thing and not worry about anyone barging in. Also practice some voices and learn how to not destroy my throat, 'cause that sounds useful.
[2:05] So yeah, that's what people have called me over the years that I remember clearly (and not including parent given nicknames because dangit El Tigre's weird with his nicknames.{El Tigre is my dad, I get it from him}). I think that's about all I've got to say on the topic, maybe next time I'll get into weird nicknames I've given people, that could be fun. Unrelated: I'm getting pretty hungry, good thing there's only less than an hour 'til close. Speaking of, my work computers/systems have been super crazy today. Sure I've only seen like 4 people but it's been doing really really weird things, which is gonna be all corporate shenanigans and I'm pretty sure someone's gonna get fired over what it's been doing, but it won't be me, 'cause it's NOT my fault in the slightest. It'll probably be fixed by tomorrow though, so w/e. On my end, not a big issue, what with the being slow and nobody being here and me being able to type all this out with little regard for what's going on in the outside world. Oh well, nothing I can do about it.
[2:20] Alright, I should probably take my leave and actually check to see if things need doing around here (prediction: probably no), so I shall bid thee a fond farewell.
Cheers!
~Cam(Tox)
