When I was little, my dad called me munchkin. And that was the name I responded too. I was Daddy’s little girl and I loved that he had a name just for me. Of course, there was the occasional Molly Marie! from both my mom and dad. This never meant anything good, like I forgot to put away my dishes or I left my scooter in the driveway. As I grew up, munchkin disappeared, as I wasn’t little anymore.

I was tall. Taller than almost every boy in middle school as a sixth grade girl. This was when I received a hurtful nickname. The boys called me Sasquatch. And when you’re a 13-year-old girl, that affects you. I hated my height and asked my mom for leg surgery, as if that even existed, and my self esteem sunk to about as low as it could get.

My last year in middle school fared much better, maybe because only one boy populated our class and he said 15 words all year. I started getting Molls more often and felt content with that, much better than Sasquatch; It was a term of endearment.

Freshman year I got the funniest nickname. I never thought about my last name besides the fact that no one could pronounce it right.
The teacher, calling out attendance, would say, “Molly…..Ko-si-ann?”

I would respond with the correct pronunciation.

And that was the normal first day of school procedure. One morning I walked through the library when a voice behind me said, “Is your last name Cocaine?”

It was a blonde boy from Spanish and I only knew him as Carlos.

I said, “No…it’s like ocean with a K.”

And he said, “Well, it looks like Cocaine. And that’s what I’m going to call you.”

To this day people still call me Cocaine, and I love it. The nickname represents my first year in high school, a whole new chapter of my life.
Whether I was Daddy’s little girl, the tall, awkward girl, or the girl with the weird last name, each nickname given to me says something about my life and I would never change that.