What?!? A special name just for me???
Oh, wait…that kind of ‘special’…
“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”
In the beginning, those words were music to my ears. You see, in high school I lived on a farm a few miles outside of our local raging metropolis, Rolla–no, not the one in Missouri, but rather it’s lesser-known red-headed stepbrother in Kansas. And for quite some time I didn’t have my own transportation, so just walking or driving to a friend’s house wasn’t an option at my disposal.
So you could imagine that nothing could break my serial sense of boredom quite like those blessed words, “Bee-Yhey! Telefono!” That, my friend, was the sound of my bestie, Phillip K. Ballz (aka PKB) blowing up our home phone,1This was circa 1996 after all, before I could ever dream of having my very own cellphone. perhaps offering to come pick me up in his mom’s forest-green Ford Explorer so we could go back and kick it at his place in town.
“But, why the, uh, ‘unique phrasing’?” you are indubitably asking the screen of your mobile device.
Well, I’m glad you asked! My dearest stepmother, “Daisy”, was Mexican, and despite living in the U.S. for at least 10 years and having mastered the English language, she never really got around to figuring out how to master the pronunciation of my commonly accepted moniker, “B.J.” As they say here in the South, “bless her soul.”
Anyways, every time ol’ PKB or anyone else called for me and she answered, the silence of our double-wide trailer would soon be broken by broken-sounding English reverberating off every wood-paneled wall in the place:
“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”
Somebody calling just for little ol’ me?!? I feel so special…
“BEE-HEY, TELEFONO!”
Well, as it turns out, that phrase, when heard muffled on the other end of the phone line, can be music to other people’s ears as well.
It didn’t take long before I found out that my dearest dipshit, PKB, found this to be comedic gold and soon was using it publicly in our high school, whether referencing me directly or indirectly. And high schoolers being the immature bunch of dumb-asses that high schoolers tend to be, it wasn’t long for this very much unwanted moniker spread like wildfire through the hallowed halls of Rolla High School.
Sometimes, I got the short version lobbed in my direction–“Bee-Yay!”, “Bee-Hay!”, “Bee-Yhey!”–no matter what ‘flavor’ of my newfound nick-nickname my fellow students preferred, they were always sure to include the very important “!” Well, technically, if this were a comic book, their speech bubbles would need to include the bonus upside Spanish exclamation mark–aka el signo de apertura de exclamación:2https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/what-is-the-upside-down-exclamation-point *ahem* “¡Bee-Yhey!“
Other times, when my cohort of jackasses were feeling particularly ornery, I might be lucky enough for them to include my nick-last name: “¡Bee-Yhey! ¡Telefono!“
Usually, referring to someone and including their last name would be a sign of respect. This was not one of those times.
In fact, The Legend of ¡Bee-Hey! got so out of hand that in our Sophomore English class, when tasked write and illustrate a children’s book, the Real ¡Bee-Hey! chose to write about a substance-abusing (but very sanguine3I’m using definition #3 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sanguine.) extraterrestrial. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the classroom, my brother-from-another–my classmate with whom I not only shared a first name, but also a birthday–ol’ Roberto chose to immortalize ¡Bee-Hey! for generations to come.
Did he write of tales of a dashing and debonair young man, the kind that men want to be and women want to be with? Were we regaled with all the adventures and conquests of a man in a foreign land who, like Cher or Beyonce, had a last name but never needed it? Are millennials worldwide indoctrinated from childhood with strange-yet-true stories that someone only as special as my alter ego could generate?
Nope, not so much. But at least Roberto managed to nail that “special” part on the head. A little too hard actually: this version of ¡Bee-Hey! appeared to suffer from a brain injury or some other developmental issue. I.e. he was “special” in all the ways one wouldn’t want to be.
Por ejemplo, did this ¡Bee-Hey! have a modestly successfully career as a published physicist/neuroscientist? No, but his employment was almost as illustrious, with him tackling the challenging task no one else at the local restaurant would even dare think of attempting: sorting out the clean forks and knives after they were ran through the industrial dishwasher.
But fortunately, ¡Bee-Hey! was blissfully obliviously to his station in life, and never once did that smiling idiot caricature of me ever cynically wonder” ¿Cómo se dice en English ‘chinga mi vida’?”4Mother, if you’re reading this, please don’t bother running that through Google translate. This, in stark, stark contrast to the real-life ¡Bee-Hey!…
The irony of all this is that occasionally I find myself envious of ¡Bee-Hey!’s unburdened and uncomplicated life. It’s taken awhile, but I have slowly come to embrace my inner idiot–er, I mean ‘simpleton’–and I guess you could say the point of the story is: take ownership of whatever it is that makes you “special.”–even if some of things aren’t exactly the most flattering.
Oh, and there’s definitely an upside to this naive optimism: I get to enjoy a little chuckle to myself in those very special moments when I have the pleasure of making a new acquaintance with a native Spanish speaker.
You know…that moment when I get to explain to them that “my name is Robert, but I go by ‘B.J.’,” and without fail, they repeat back to me “¿Bee-Yhey?”
*snort*
And always, also without fail, I can’t help but mentally respond with “That would be Dr. ¡Bee-Hey! ¡Telefono!, PhD to you, buen señor or señorita…”
Content created on: 19 August 2022 (Friday)
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