My birth name is Gary Wright Bowers

So when we lived on a block where another kid named Gary Turner also lived, my dad called him Gary Wrong Turner (Dad fancied himself a wag)

Family legend has it that my older brother couldn’t pronounce Gary so instead he called me Ghee-Bo (oddly, nowadays that might work the same way Scarlett Johanson is sometimes called Scar-Jo)

My mom called me “GB” all my adult life

Many of my online friends call me Clay because of a name I chose for myself on one of the early social websites (my WordPress blog is called “One with Clay, Image and Text”)

There’s a lady from work from Ethiopia who makes me feel like a multimillionaire because she calls me “Getty”

And Marty K, my friend since 1963, has an odd blend of Tourette’s and glossolalia that has compelled him to call me at least a thousand names in the course of our  62-year friendship, “Bowsie” in the early days, “Zeb” and “Bigby” and “Bongo” and “Nahblotz” more recently

Thanks to him a few of our inner circle of friends call me The Bow (rhymes with How)

And that’s fine, if inconsequential, with me

Even Mr. Late-for-Lunch would be OK–who cares?

As long as the intent is benign,

And no disrespect is intended,

We are good.