bjimba's bjimblog

Why *bjimba*?

Why bjimba?

My username on BearBlog is bjimba.

This has been my username on countless sites over the past two score years. CompuServe. AOL. Yahoo. Everything since.

Lovely little username. Short, sweet, probably unused in whatever dataspace I'm joining.

The moniker originated with my Cosmic twin, the man I've known since Pre-Primer1. His name's Bill.

Everyone had a nickname in our high school. Mine was Buffles. This was a corruption of my surname (Russell) and Ruffles potato chips. I didn't particularly like it, but by senior year, everyone used it to greet me.

Bill sensed that it bugged me, though, and he made a great effort to call me Jim.

Once, he lapsed, greeting me gregariously one night at a local gin mill2, with a hearty "He-ey! Buh...", caught himself, and smoothly slid into "Jim... buh!"

I guess the second "Buh" was to make the first one seem purposeful.

Once uttered, it locked into place. Bill snapped that sonorous nickname up in his head, and I would forevermore be known as "Bjimba".

  1. That's what the year before First Grade was in our little Catholic grammar school. None of that German kindergarten stuff for the Sisters of St. Joseph.↩

  2. Legal drinking age in New Jersey at the time was eighteen. Those were the days.↩