The Many Names of Toninho

Reading Chase's Interactions with People post made me remember how much I didn't like him when I first met him, but not really. Having known him for the past five and a half years or so, I enjoyed reading about some of his awkward interactions, after all, awkwardness makes for some good stories. What I really found entertaining was the mention of his former place of employment, Market Basket (The MB). When I was looking for a summer job a few years ago, the MB was the place that all my friends told me to avoid at all costs. So I did and it worked out well for me because the MB is a silly place. I was in the MB with JQ and Clydesdale Johannis (another good friend of mine who is currently employed by the MB, though he was not working at this particular instance) at the beginning of the summer. We went in to purchase a gallon of water at the tantalizing low MB price of one half dollar, or fifty cents, or $0.50. Still in the aisle, JQ and Clydesdale began tossing the gallon of water back and forth. I stood and watched. Clydesdale dropped one of the return tosses and the container hit the floor and broke open, thus getting the gallon of water all over the aisle. Some random kid was walking by the aisle when it happened and assured us he would get help, but the way he said it you would think a somewhat severe emergency need taking care of.

We weren't about to wait for that random kid, so we summoned a nearby MB employee who told us he would take care of the spill. So we walked back down the aisle and picked up another gallon of water to replace the now broken and empty one. What happened next I thought, and still think, was very funny. The MB employee who told us he would take care of the incident came to the aisle with a mop and bucket. He proceeded to clean up the water spill with more water. Maybe it's just me, but isn't that exacerbating the problem? There's a water spill on the floor, so let's put more water there and increase the slipping hazard! He probably put one of those "piso mojado" signs in the aisle afterward, too, but I didn't think to check. Couldn't they have just put one of those signs there in the first place? But that's the MB, I'm glad I took the advice all those years ago.

Mention of the MB just reminded me of the wet floor debacle. Chase's post focused on the awkward interactions he has had with various people and I'm going to play off of that idea. I'm not going to take his idea and reflect on my awkward situations, rather I will discuss my ability to keep a straight face. Generally I can keep a straight face even if I'm saying something that is either completely untrue or partially untrue. If you know me too well then I probably won't be able to get away with it, but I like to have a little fun sometimes. To present my point I will take you back to the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, one of my all time favorite summers! At this point my whole direct family, with the exception of me, were living in California. My friends knew this, but only the friends I hung out with and talked to all the time knew my living situation for the summer. One day we went down to a local field to have some sporting fun. One of my friends, I'll call him Jimbo, was there. Jimbo was a friend of mine, but I only saw/spoke with him on occasion. He asked me where I was living for the summer. I guess I was in the mood to have a little fun so I lied about it. Now here's the key, I told him something absolutely unbelievable, that I was living in a cardboard box. Now obviously that's not true. So I shook it off and told him smoothly that I was just kidding, I'm living in my car. He just looked at me, I don't remember exactly what he said, but the whole situation greatly amused me. I don't know if he really believed me, but eventually I told him that I was living at my grandma's house for the summer. I actually lived there for that summer and the majority of the next, what an experience that was. Maybe another potential blogging topic, but who knows. I should have seen how long I could keep the "I'm living in my car" joke going. I call it a joke, but I guess some people would call it a lie.

Actually, when I come to think of it, I probably pulled off an even better one senior year of high school when I told two of my friends that I was gay. I already recounted that story on our largely unsuccessful conjoined friend blog, Retentive Gibberish (I didn't think I would ever mention that again), but feel free to read the story by clicking here. The short version goes like this. Senior year of high school I had gym class with two friends, Chase was one of them, and the rest of the class was vastly Puerto Ricans. So the three of us usually had sweet conversations during class. One gym class we were talking about girlfriends, actually it was mainly the other two, I was mostly listening at the time. Then they asked me if I had ever had a girlfriend to which I replied, "Nah, I'm pretty gay." The presentation was flawless, Chase can back me up on this, too. I let it sink in for a few moments before I laughed and told them I was just kidding. I really should see what happens if I carry out something like this, see how far I can go with it. I'll have to get presented with the right opportunity, but maybe one day. Sometimes when I tell people the truth, but the answer wasn't what they expected, they aren't sure if I'm joking or not. I've had extensive experience with those types of situations.

This should have been my next play

I even got to put my straight-facing skill to use in school! Sophomore year of college my marketing group and I were making a commercial for a project we were doing on AT&T. For some reason when we wrote the script for it we decided to make it one huge sexual innuendo. I have no idea why we stuck with that idea either. I cannot recall exactly the content of the commercial, but there we had two roles, one was an AT&T person, or at least someone who was an AT&T customer who was recommending signing up with AT&T. The other was the person who had the issue, which was related to phones in some way, but we made it seem like this guy had erectile dysfunction. I was nominated to play the latter role because the group thought I could keep a straight face saying the lines. So I accepted and we made that commercial. I really wish I had a copy of it for viewing pleasure. I still remember when we showed the commercial in class, the class and the professor definitely recognized what we did there, and the professor was smirking. What a great year sophomore year was.

Going back to Retentive Gibberish to find the post I wrote about a great day in gym class back in high school made me curious. I haven't looked at Retentive Gibberish since last December when I finished the article about getting to know me, Toninho, better. That was an excellent post idea, all credit given to Chase who had the idea and penned the questions for me to answer. I went on to peruse Retentive Gibberish since it has been months and I came across Chase's article about his name. Now it's my turn, why I use the name Toninho on blogger. My name is Anthony and I've typically gone by this name throughout the course of my life. When I was a little guy growing up I still went by Anthony because of my dad. My father's name is Antonio, so he was always Tony. Two Tonys in the same house all the time could cause some confusion (Is your name not Tony? That's going to cause some confusion). But as I have gotten older I have come to know people from different activities, situations, etc. I find it interesting and amusing that you can probably accurately guess how people know me just by the name they use for me.

I almost always introduce myself as Anthony, but not everyone calls me that. The people that call me Anthony are people I know from the collegiate track team I was on, coworkers, and adults for the most part. High school was when some of my closer friends started calling me Tony, which I have no problem with. Junior year of high school, my English teacher (another of my favorite teachers of all time), gave me the nickname A-Train. He came up with the name because he didn't like the nickname of T-Bone that one of my other friends in the class gave to me. Only an exclusive group of people refer to me as the A-Train, including the man who came up with it and a very small group of other people. Or you could be like Chase and call me the Gay-Train. I liked making the horrible joke that the nickname A-Train made sense because I was on track (get it, on the track team!).




Through the high school track team, our upper class teammates began calling me by my last name. This stuck and to this day people who I ran track with in high school, or that I met through people I knew on the track team, call me by my last name. I distinctly remember one day at work a few years ago when one of my former teammates came in and called me by my last name. After they continued on with their business my coworker looked at me and said "what did they just call you?" So if someone calls me by my last name, you would probably be right if you guessed that I ran track with them in high school. Most of my friends from college, except for my track team friends, call me Tony. So depending on where I am and/or who I'm with I get called Anthony, Tony, or A-Train. I have gotten accustomed to responding to all three. I think it's kind of funny that you can usually accurately tell how I know someone just by the name they use for me.

I chose the name Toninho as an alias for this blog mainly thanks to Seanahue. When Seanahue was signing our intramural soccer team up Sophomore year of college, he entered my name on the roster as Tondinho. My favorite soccer player of all time is Ronaldo, formerly known as Ronaldinho (before the Ronaldinho that played for Barcelona in the mid 2000s), which stands for little Ronaldo because he was very young when he was coming up the ranks in soccer. I took out the "d" since there is no "d" in Tony like there is in Ronaldo, but I did like the name and it also makes sense for me. I'm technically "Little Tony" and I really like Brazilian soccer players. So intramural soccer and Seanahue deserve the credit for the name Toninho. Maybe people will start calling me that, making four different names for me. Only time will tell.

Since Retentive Gibberish has, for the most part, died (it's mostly dead, I got the diagnosis), there's one more thing I'm going to share from that blog: my two rules of success.

Two Rules of Success

1. Never tell everything you know
2.