Addie Gets A Nickname

By Giggles Anderson

Addie, now 13 years old, remembers how sweet life used to be. Father would come to her bedroom, armed with various chocolate candy bars. The two would chat about school, homework, and current events.

Addie loved that Father cared what she thought about the world. He would ask her hard questions just like Stone Phillips.

She suggested America send all the poor people to Wyoming. Father called her a Republican. Addie proposed a tax increase to fund free medical care for everyone. Father called her a Socialist.

Politics would never again be so much fun.

Sometimes he would ask about The Boys and threaten to strangle any derelict that tried to look under Addie’s dress. “Just say the word, Biscuit, and I will squeeze his neck until his head pops,” was one of the many threats Father hurled at potential beaus.

As if she could be so lucky. Father clearly hadn’t gotten the memo.

The Boys ignored her for the entire 7th Grade, noticed her on the fifth day of the 8th Grade, and instantly turned on her. The Boys at Middle School, the same ones of whom Georgina and Addie once dreamed, teased her mercilessly.

Addie could thank Mr. Porter’s Science class for that one.

The teacher asked “What is the specialized connective tissue that functions as the major storage site for fat in the form of triglycerides?”

Addie sensing a chance to put her best foot forward raised her hand confidently.

Mr. Porter glanced down at his seating chart and said, “Adelaide, you have the answer?”

Addie’s authoritative voice broke the still of the quiet classroom.

“Adipose.”

Mr. Porter smiled, nodded and marked a participation point on the seating chart.

And in the dead air between the notation of her grade and the next question one of The Boys muttered, “She should know.”

Addie felt as large as a house and as small as a mouse as a humiliating snicker thundered across the entire class.

A month would pass before Addie would volunteer another answer in class.

From that day forward, Addie was known all over Cordova Heights Middle as Addipose.

“This was certainly not popularity I was hoping for,” Addie wrote in her new brown suede Lindsay Lohan journal.

Middle school, full of never before experienced trials and tribulations, filled a new journal each month. Addie had eleven journals for the 7th Grade, one for each month of the 10-month school year and one for the two summer months.

Addie longed for the earlier years of her schooling when she could fit the events of her school year into three journals with more than a few blank pages to spare.

Addie ended the sixteen pages of feverish introspection about Addipose and her inability to dribble, pass or shoot from the free throw line by writing, “Father would be all over The Boys if He knew about it. If I tell Him, He will rush to the school and scream at them.”

Father continued to visit Addie in her bedroom.

He would usually arrive with a prepackaged bag of Hershey miniatures, a mishmash of Brach’s candies, or a Walmart bag half full of chocolate candy bars produced by the M&M Mars Company.

Sometimes Father would eat one by Himself. Sometimes they would share one. Sometimes He’d put one in his shirt pocket, for later.

But Father, bless His ever giving heart, would leave the remaining candies for Addie to enjoy at her leisure.

Father would always whisper with a wink, “Don’t tell Mother, don’t tell John.”

He had a Cool side to him and Addie, comforted by Father’s presence and unwilling to mar her father’s image of her by introducing Addipose into her life at home, never mentioned the daily taunts she endured at school.

This was her secret.