The Birth of the Nickname
Hi world! Have you ever been on a bad date? I have along with millions of other women (and men) across the planet!
Mary’s Nicknames is a follow up to my book, Nicknames-Tales from the Shallow End of the Manhattan Dating Pool. The longer I hangout in the shallow end, the more nicknames I add to my plethora of dating stories!
Nicknames is a comedy designed to enlighten others through my exhilarating and life changing experiences. I turn what could have been horrible date nights into stories to share.
I did the reverse of my friends. I married way too young to a guy who needed a green card, although we thought were “in love” at the time (21!) and was divorced at twenty-six. Since then, I have amassed a multitude of emails, text messages, and stories about my post-divorce experiences trying to navigate the perilous waters of both on- and offline dating. My stories are funny and if I didn’t share them with the world, I would have imploded, so I wrote Nicknames.
Many single women have a common thread of disastrous first dates especially when dating in a big city! You will enjoy learning about what is often in the minds of women in the moment of the date.
Always the hope(ful) romantic, I do hope that one day the right guy finds me but until then I’ll continue to share my I can’t-make-this-shit-up stories with you!
I have met many, many women who have had a few of their own “Nicknames”! Please drop me a line with the worst date you have been on or share one of the “nicknames” you bestowed on a date. I would love to hear from you!
I live, work, and play in NYC. When not dating, I can be found planning my next scuba diving adventure and hanging out with my rescued pets, pup Valentino and kitty Diva.
I also charge full speed ahead pounding the pavement, racing marathons and raising money to bring awareness of suicide prevention and outreach programs.
Here’s an excerpt from my book Nicknames to bring everyone up to speed on the whole nicknaming phenomenon.
Like so many millions of my sisters-in-singlehood, I have turned to what must be the planet’s fastest-growing industry: The wacky world of online dating. It’s really a genius idea, shopping for the perfect date just like you shop for a new floor lamp on Amazon—just click on your preferences (How tall? How bright? Modern or traditional?) and they’ll show you a list of men to match, ready to go.
Except, when your “package” finally shows up, it looks nothing (not to mention acts nothing) like the picture that made you pull out your Visa in the first place.
For me, the key to staying sane has been my girlfriends. Lucky for me, they’re all going through their own personal versions of Manhattan dating hell. Not that we haven’t had fun along the way.
The three of us have probably logged hundreds of dates between us. As girlfriends do, we discuss those dates regularly, down to the tiniest detail.
That’s where the whole nickname thing got started. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment (or the exact guy out of our long list of duds) that started it all, but once it caught on, the nickname thing seemed to take on a life of its own. Right around the moment a relationship would start to die, a nickname for the poor bastard who was about to get the axe would be born, falling out of the mouth of the gal whose Facebook status was about to switch back to “single.” So Joe became Sloppy Joe, Nick turned into Small Dick, John became Insufficient Funds, Rob turned into OnStar. The list goes on and on. Even if the nickname-giver was still holding out hope that the guy might actually be a keeper, the nickname was always the deciding factor. Once it had been bestowed, that was it.
Done. Finito. So long, Charlie.
It’s not about being mean, I swear. It’s about finding the silver lining, which, more often than not, is the ability to laugh at the sheer volume and variety of bad dates we’ve been subjected to.
That, my friends, is what brings me to this book.
I can’t make this shit up. So I might as well share it.
