The Story of Condiment -or- How Self-Nicknaming Always Goes Awry

First there was Mumbly Joe, which was good but just not sticky enough.

I tried for a long time to think of a better handle, but there were difficulties. Eric Anderson is an impenetrable name and not easily made fun of or riffed upon. I thank my parents for sparing me the ridicule of a weird name, but it has come at great cost: never having a nickname, never bonding with people around a shared pet name. I knew that I had to look outside of myself for the new moniker. I thought of what I looked like when I bowled and what I would like to look like when I bowled. The two images were in conflict with each other, and from that juxtaposition came a third image, an image combining the worst of what I was with the worst I wanted to be. I saw in my dreams a man, a large man, who spoke gruff platitudes in sentence fragments. The man was huge and awkward—stiff and inflexible—and he wore a mask, and leather pants. He was loud, with a raucous laugh. He was intimidating and strange. He was the Lord Humongous from the Road Warrior.

I would christen myself as the Lord Humongous. No one could mess with the genius of this new title. I was satisfied. I was—dare I say—happy.

It was probably Lintinin who screwed it all up, probably under a minute after he first heard my new name. Yes, we as humans should have the right to self-determination, but Lintinin just wasn’t going to give me the pleasure of calling me the Lord Humongous.

He was going to call me Lord Mongo, which drew great laughter, and lots of it.

This was later shortened to Mongo.

Which became Captain Bingo.

Which became Marlon Brando.

All of this was happening outside my control, of course. Lintinin just wound it up as tightly as he could, then let my nickname spin out of control by itself and watched it smash into things and change shape. At first I experienced great frustration and rage, but then I gave in. I would be Marlon Brando. That was fine. Whatever you want, I thought. Just give me the ball and back off.

A year later I got bored with Brando and decided to name myself after the guy from the Cherry Poppin Daddies, MC Large Drink.

This became McLarge or something like that, and it wasn’t so much the cleverness of the variant that bugged me, but the fact that Sterling and the Heat and maybe even McCracken were getting such great long-lasting Ridicule Value out of frustrating my basic need to be called what I wanted to be called.

MC Large Drink only lasted one outing.

The next time I would come with an actual nickname…what Sterling had been calling me, “The Conduit of Truth,” which I earned from a lifetime of inelegant frank-talking honesty. Eric will not bullshit you, Eric is the Conduit of Truth. If you want someone to powder your ass, go somewhere else. If you want to really know the score—even if it makes you depressed and tired and mirthless—visit the Conduit of Truth.

So I showed up and typed my name into the Accuscore—the Conduit—and stepped back, proud to be bowling under such a clever handle of my own design.

“The Condiment? What’s that?” someone blurted. I can’t remember if it was Sterling or Lintinin. It doesn’t really matter who. The only thing that matters is that the mockery had already begun before I finished typing the final “t’ in my name. The Conduit—as a human and as a bowling name—was destroyed before he even came into existence.

So I have learned my lesson. I have given up. I will cease to resist. I have accepted my fate, and I have learned to love it. I will top you, ha-ha, see, you see how I will find a way to own this name, this clever name? I will outfox you all; I will embrace the name foisted upon me by hooligans and I will reestablish control over my identity. I will not experience any more nicknaming-gone-awry torment in my life. There is no room for it. This name will stay the same, for as long as I bowl.

Or until Lintinin decides to change it.

Until then,

I am,

Respectfully,

The guy you love to see Choke-N-Melt,

The man with the glass arm,

Your friend and enemy both,

The guy who tops you occasionally,

The ball-return kicker, expletive blurter, and child frightener,

Condiment.