F.E.W.T.Y.P.

At the gathering that I wrote about yesterday, David was there. I hadn't not seen him in over 30 years, but I had never forgotten him.

David teased me unmercifully for many years of my childhood.

He called me one specific name and when he said "it" I knew what the rest of the saying was that he had concocted in his filthy little boy mind.

While commuting into work this morning I was sans both a newspaper (cut out by my newly revised budget) and any member of my posse, so it gave me time to reflect on ol’ David and why back-in-the-day his name calling did not upset me as much as it possibly could have.

Now don’t get me wrong it certainly did not make me feel all warm and fuzzy when he would echo “it” in the hallways at school.

During my morning contemplation I realized that while growing up in a house with 7 siblings, three of whom were sisters and two of those sisters were within a 3 1/2 year spread of me – we were very competitive and often incredibly mean to each other.

We would, at times, physically fight, but the real cruelty came by way of words.

No swears, just dumb, hurtful names.

And if we couldn’t think of a “common” mean name we would make one up.

“You’re a Pig-A-Jew!”

What?

We weren’t being racist, we had no clue what a Jew was or if they were bad or good - it was just a word we had heard, quite possibly while watching The Magic Door Sunday morning television show – which we didn't realize was all about Judaism....we just liked the show.

Sisters can be brutal and we three were no exceptions.

So that could be why when David decided he liked me and wanted to express it by calling me THAT name...I was already hardened by the years of fending off names of all varieties.

For the record – the acronym that is the title to this post - F.E.W.T.Y.P.

Stands for a name that my sisters gave me while I was going through puberty...

Fried Eggs With The Yolks Popped

It just doesn’t get any meaner than that.

i was flat flat flat