No. 1
We were watching the UNC vs. N.C. State game when the announcers referenced a guy who, back in the ‘40s, had played for both schools. His name was Bones McKinney.
“Nobody has cool nicknames like Bones anymore,” I lamented to Tanner.1
“You know,” he said. “We have a son. We could bring that back.”
He proceeded to (jokingly) call Foster “Bones” for the next few minutes while I (jokingly) fretted, saying that I didn’t want our kid to get saddled with that exact nickname.
We batted various other options around until I looked up, a glint in my eye.
“BOOPIE!” I shouted.
Foster currently refers to a rear end as a “boopie” — the result of “booty” being said with a slight speech impediment and something I hope never changes.
There already is a Boopie Miller (whose Christian name, I’m sorry to tell you, is … Kevin2) who plays for SMU. So there’s a precedent.
And Foster is embracing it. We’ve referred to him as Boopie a few times since. On Friday, in a spurt of energy, he ran from our living room to Tanner’s office, screaming at the top of his lungs: “here comes BOOOOOPIEEEEE Prebert3!”
No. 2
When I was living in Wilmington, my parents were contemplating getting another dog.
I was out walking one Sunday with the guy I was dating, both of us walking our own dogs. We were taking a different route than normal and went down an unfamiliar street.
Here is where I tell you the shocking news that my dog Darby — she of dead squirrel eating fame — was not a great leash walker.4 My boyfriend’s dog was a little better, but she was a big time barker and felt the need to warn the entire neighborhood that we were coming through.
So we were making quite a scene as we passed a house where a woman was corralling several of the cutest golden retriever puppies I’ve ever seen. She and I made eye contact, and she yelled, laughing, “Y’all want one more to add to that mix?”
We laughed back and kept walking. But as we looped back toward my house, I started thinking about how my parents actually might want one of those pups.
So I did what any capable Millennial newspaper reporter would do: I stalked her.
I virtually walked the route we’d taken that day on Google Maps, found her house, then used GIS records to look up her name. I used some other tool to find her phone number — this could have been a database we had access to at the newspaper, or honestly, it could have been Whitepages.com — and then I just … called her.
To her credit, she did not bat a metaphorical eye when I explained who I was and why I was calling. She also didn’t ask how I got her contact information, which seems wild in hindsight. (I did not live in her neighborhood. She had never seen me before. We shared a five-second interaction during which she had implied that she had puppies to give away and absolutely nothing else.) She gamely told me she would likely have at least one puppy available for adoption.
And — ending not with a bang but a whimper — my parents decided not to get another dog after all.
I was getting ready to write, “2025 Pressley would never do a thing like this,” and then remembered that I used GIS records less than a year ago to confirm that a guy we saw on TV was, as we suspected, our neighbor, so. Once a stalker reporter, always a reporter.
No. 3
A small bright spot this week after answering 4 million why questions and repeating the world’s most basic instructions another 4 million times.
Foster and I were hitting a golf ball back and forth in the living room when it rolled in an area I couldn’t quite reach.
“Oh, bud, could you help me?” I said, mentally preparing myself for a “no, YOU get it!” response.
“Sure I can! Sometimes you just need a li-dul help,” he said instead.
He shimmied into the corner and pulled the ball out with his club.
“I’m glad you asked me for help,” he said as he handed it back to me — a phrase I have already said to him over and over in his short life.
And I suddenly forgot all 8 million hard parenting moments in one fell swoop.
I went to high school with two guys who everybody — students, teachers, coaches, everybody — referred to by their nicknames, Stumpy and Dooty. I am not kidding.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the name Kevin. But I was hoping for a more exciting government name to nickname origin story.
Our last name is going to be a situation for him for some time.
I mean, duh. Once, my dad was staying at my house to take care of Darby while I traveled to a work conference. He came inside, let Darby out of her crate and said hello to her, and went back downstairs to grab his bag from the car. In the, oh, 45 seconds it took him to get back into the house, Darby had gone into the bathroom, pulled an empty aspirin bottle and a RAZOR BLADE from the trash can, and brought them to her crate, where she was presumably going to conduct a ritual sacrifice. When my dad walked back inside, Darby was sitting perfectly still next to her contraband, refusing to make eye contact with him. Dogs like that don’t just succumb to such pedestrian things as leashes.