Like A Thousand

I have a friend who is nicknamed "L.A.T." and its not because he has well formed back muscles. Formerly Bob, he got this name when he one day went to play golf in a foursome with another friend of mine, an avid and excellent golfer, whereas Bob is not. When the day was over I phoned the good golfer and asked "What did Bob shoot today?" His response: "Like A Thousand." Hence the abbreviation of same became Bob's nickname.

Another person I was friends with a long time ago received the unfortunate nickname of "toothpaste." This was because he came to our bowling league one evening with dabs of shaving cream in back of his earlobes, apparently having forgotten to wipe them off before arriving. A neanderthal who was in the league with us saw this and of course had to point it out, much to the embarrassment of the soon to be christened "toothpaste." "That's shaving cream!" the angry "toothpaste" yelled. "Yeah," says 'neanderthal', "but 'toothpaste' is funnier! Who the fuck brushes behind their ears? You got some cavities back there asshole?"

I never cared much for "neanderthal" but wouldn't tell him to his face as he was the approximate size of one of the larger model Buicks. I had also thought of some nicknames for him besides "neanderthal (which he was only called in the minds of the frightened)" but since "schmuck," "lobotomy" and "dickwad" lack subtlety I discarded them. Twenty years later I've heard rumors that his current nicknames are "death row" and "soon to be euthanized" but I can't ascertain whether this is true or not. "Toothpaste" attended "Colgate" and became a "dentist" who patients rechristened as "Shaving Cream" because one day he showed up at work with a dab of toothpaste on his chin.

Then there's the story of my friend "Doc" who is not an actual doctor but rather an optician. His brother is an optometrist which is a doctor though not in the medical sense of the word. His father was an optician. His mom was a nurse and his sister still is. "Doc" morphed into "Doc" from the former "J.O.S.R.T.A.J (James Or Sometimes Referred To As Jim") because about 20 years ago he, I and a bunch of high school chums had a show on public access television in which we had him host a phony advice segment originally titled "Ask James." We decided that this title was too short and didn't flow so it was renamed "Ask Doctor James" because of his familial ties to the medical profession.

There is a secondary reason for the birth of "Doc" that I don't often mention. Whenever we needed a pair of glasses for a sketch we'd ask "Doc" to see what he could dig out of his office's "retired for being unfashionable bin." In one sketch someone had to portray Ben Franklin and "Doc" brought in a pair of "granny glasses." When he put them on to show us how they looked I commented that were he fifty years older he'd resemble "Doc" from the television series "Gunsmoke," a character portrayed by the avuncular actor Milburn Stone. In fact, most people can resemble this character if they put on "granny glasses," slouch, act curmudgeonly, use laudanum to kill pain and pull decayed teeth by tying one end of a string to a horse's tail and the other to the tooth in question and then have the horse go galloping up the street (make sure to tie the patient down first).

Which reminds me of the story of my friend "Horse Poop"...