WHAT’S IN A NAME? I have met so many interesting people in the last year or so that haven’t known me long or well. Someone asked me yesterday how I got the name “Robin”. The story in my family goes: if I were a boy I was going to be named “Stevie”; if I were a girl I was going to be named “Tammy”. And yet I got stuck with “Robin”, which was not a popular boy’s name at that time. Coincidentally I have cousins named Stevie and Tammy so my aunties must have also liked the names. I was actually named for Robin Roberts a MAJOR baseball star of the early 1950s. My dad tells me it was a toss-up between Robin Roberts and Ted Williams so I might have been Ted William Richard – probably nicknamed “Teddy”. I don’t feel like a “Teddy”. Being kinda chubby and being kinda fuzzy I probably would have been nicknamed “Teddy Bear”. Not that “Robin” was any walk in the park. “Red, red robin”, “Robin Hood”, “Batman & Robin”, “Rockin’ Robin”. Everyone thought they were the first to come up with those jokes. They weren’t. Robin Roberts played most of his career in Philadelphia and there is a life sized statue outsize their ballpark. He was to the Phillies what Ted Williams was to the Red Sox and Babe Ruth was to the Yankees. He became a play-by-play announcer later in his career and died in 2010. The folks at the Standard Times call me “Rob” because on my first day working there a very neurotic Robin Servais grabbed me and said SHE was the only Robin at the Standard Times and I HAVE to be something else – so she dubbed me “Rob”. My aunties and cousins still call me “Robbie”. I’ll be 103 in the Sunshine Home and one of my cousins will visit and call me “Robbie” – and I’ll LOVE it! Most people just call me “Robin”. I guess that sounds like enough of a nickname. So – that’s the story.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:02:46 +0000