What’s In A Name

Believe it or not, my Dad did not want to name me Tyler.

As I’m sure most males do after watching their wives go through hours and hours of tremendous pain during delivery, Dad lost out on the infamous parental game of “Name Your Offspring.” Family legend has it that Dad wanted to name me “Kurt.”

Kurt? Really?

Maybe it was just an 80’s thing, or maybe it was a desire to give his son a name that gave off a certain coolness. Kurt does give off a particular air of confidence, smoothness, unshakableness. Or maybe Kurt Bradshaw had an athlete’s ring to it (and for those who have seen me take part in athletic activity, you know that name would have been a horrible choice). Either way, “Kurt” had a lot of potential. Dad liked it.

Alas, my name is Tyler. As is the case in most baby-naming situations, the Mother can pull the trump card of “I carried this baby inside me for nine months thanks to you,” cutting her spouse off at the knees and taking away any say he might have in the naming of his child. Maybe by child three or four, after the promise of a future generation has been secured, the mother might be willing to let her husband try his hand at this whole “baby-naming game.” But on the first child (and in my case the only child), the husband‘s life is much more comfortable if he learns to step back and let his wife select the moniker. My Dad was 0-1.

At the desire of my mother, I became Tyler—and I’ve been Tyler ever since. According to most baby-naming books and websites, the name means dominance, historic beauty, and is typically bestowed upon one with a God-like physique.

Just kidding. It means “maker of tiles”. I couldn’t make this up, and I also can’t make a tile. I’ve never even installed a tile, let alone make one from…what do you even make a tile from anyway?!

Don’t get me wrong, I like my name. It’s a good name, which my family and closest friends eventually shortened to “Ty”. Maybe they shortened it to avoid the embarrassment over my lack of tile-making-ability. Or maybe because they had an obsession for beanie babies. Either way, I became “Ty” to most everyone I knew.

Everyone except my Dad, that is. Yes, he would call me “Ty” as often as anyone else, but most of the time, he called me something else—“Bub”. Hence the name of the blog you’re visiting. And nearly every time I saw him, talked to him on the phone, or received a text message from him, the conversations he initiated started with the same familiar salutation: “Hey, bub.”

I’m not really sure where it started, or why he chose those particular words. But I was glad he did. So many parents can choose nicknames for their children that humiliate them as they grow into adulthood. Nothing humiliates a child more than being dropped off at middle school by his Mother, who in that moment forgets her little man is growing up and accidentally says goodbye to “her little pookie bear”. Or that angsty adolescent being dropped off at the mall for a night of teenage semi-debauchery and hearing her Dad bid farewell to his “little sweetums”. Early on in a child’s life, they ought to have the ability to sit down and negotiate with their parents, choosing a nickname that is both affection-laden but not detrimental to the child’s social possibilities. “Little buddy? Okay, I can deal with that. Sugar butt? No. Absolutely not. Baby boy? Okay, but only at family get-togethers. My wittle cuddle monster? You’ve got to be kidding me. Aren’t you people supposed to be mature?”

I even saw an article online where a fellow Tyler was given the nickname of “Booby Cakes” by his Mother. Is this real life?

I’d like to think that Dad was very intentional when he chose “Bub” for me. I’d like to think that he sat down, trying his hardest to think of a word that would not induce embarrassment or public humiliation, but would also show a deep-seated affection for his son. I’d like to think he went through hundreds of potential nicknames, discarding each one for its lack of manliness and potential for damaging my delicate social standing. And then, in a moment of frustration, Dad realized he was overthinking the entire thing, making it more complicated than it needed to be. And in a desire for simplicity, he settled on “Bub”, the perfect combination of love and social respectability.

But in reality, it probably just came naturally when he first saw me—which, in all actuality, is just as beautiful as the process I just envisioned. Like most expecting parents who say they just won’t know what name is right until they actually see the baby, most nicknames probably are created organically. I wonder what it was about me that made my Dad think I had “Bub” qualities? Maybe as Dad got to know me, I just had a “Bub-worthy” personality. Or maybe it was one of the babbling phrases I uttered as a baby toddling around our little house. Maybe Dad just started calling me that without giving it a moment’s thought. Or maybe it was his revenge—his way of renaming me since he hadn’t picked the name Tyler. Either way, the nickname stuck. To me, Scott Bradshaw was “Dad”, and to him, I was “Bub”, and everything in the world was right.

Dad would call me Bub no matter the situation—good or bad. That reliability, that dependability became something that was warm and authentic. He could be angry or joyful, distressed or at ease, nervous or cool as a cucumber. No matter the emotions, his feelings towards me never changed. He was a Father who never grew tired of being one, and it showed in the way he treated me, even down to the ever-present nickname.

Even when he was upset with me, which happens even in the rosiest of parent-child relationships, he rarely called me anything but Bub. My Mom and Dad always said I was a “good kid”—the type of kid who gave his parents very little trouble. The kind of kid who doesn’t give his parents a lot of reason to worry. I was typically home by 10 or 11 every night (usually not by choice, but by a lack of social options, but hey…I was okay watching Letterman every night instead of making friends). But every kid pushes the envelope and tests the waters of disobedience—even the well-behaved and socially anxious. And on occasion, those tempting waters felt warm enough to dive right in.

If Dad was forced to identify my most frustrating behavior, it would have probably been my lack of organization (Mom would be able to name this in a heartbeat, as she’s one of the cleanest people I know). I was a pretty creative kid, and organization is often an impediment to the creative mind…at least that’s what I told my Mom when I didn’t want to clean my room. My parents were often fans of putting the right things in the right places where they belonged, which makes sense to most. I, on the other hand, took a more artistic, free-range approach. I was a fan of throwing and scattering toys all over the place, giving them the freedom to not be defined by a particular box or shelf. I admired the sometimes apocalyptic view of my toys and belongings.

In reality, no amount of word-wrangling is going to justify this—plain and simple, I was a messy kid.

To my Dad’s distress, my messiness wasn’t just limited to the confines of our impeccable home. My toy terror, many times, would spread to the yard. I had all the toys and outdoor playthings a boy needed. Buckets, dumptrucks, shovels, sand molds, baseballs, sidewalk chalk, and water balloons. I would use the freedom of the wild outdoors as an excuse to go crazy in our spacious backyard in the middle of Suburbia, and when it was time to call it a night, I rarely worried about putting these toys back where they belonged.

My Dad, on the other hand, always kept a well-maintained yard. Like most Dads, he fought an ongoing war with crabgrass and dandelions. He was constantly mulching or trimming or mowing. Planting and weeding were standard activities. Our yard was always beautiful. Mom and Dad did a tremendous job of selecting pots and vibrant flowers to bring personality and cheerfulness to our house. I chose to decorate the yard with toys instead. And as much as those toys may have reminded Dad of the fun-loving nature of his adorable son, they were also a distraction or impediment to the yardwork he often needed to complete.

He didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t put those toys in a bin in the garage or underneath the deck, but it never got through to me that I should start cleaning these things up on a regular basis without being asked. I always remember that Dad had a huge, black lockbox in our carport/eventual garage where I was supposed to put all of my toys and other outdoor belongings every night as the sun began to set. I don’t know what it is, but my personality just wasn’t hardwired to follow this command, and I rarely put my yard toys away.

And although I thought I could really wear Dad down, I don’t think I ever did. I was a pretty crafty kid, so I would even monitor where Dad was in the yard as the sun would start to set, thinking I could go in one of the other doors in the house, hop in the shower, and use that as an excuse to not have to go back out and pick up the toys.

Alas, he persisted.

Even if I was freshly-showered and pajama-clad, Dad would come in the house to locate the perpetrator. And where most parents might yell or explode at their child’s lack of organizational capacity, my Dad, calmly yet sternly, would tell me it was time to go out back and pick up the yard so he could mow or landscape. He never shrieked hysterically about my thoughtlessness or lack of concern. He never lost his mind, like most Dads on TV sitcoms. He never ridiculed me for being a thoughtless little punk whose playfulness was an impediment to his calling to be a master caretaker and gardener. Instead, he would look down the stairs, and greet me the way he would any other time “Hey bub, I need you to get out back and clean up those toys.”

I’m sure I grumbled. I’m sure I rolled my eyes. I’m sure I put up a fight, and in some scenarios even acted like the bratty stereotypical teen you envision in these scenarios. And yes, there were even times where I’m sure I shrieked like an insolent little brat who deserved much less respect than my Dad gave me.

But to my Dad, I was Bub—and I always would be. And you don’t give up on your Bub. You don’t give up on your child. And my Dad never did.

Even if the sun had set.

There were times where my elusiveness worked to avoid Dad, who often worked late into the night in our yard, and then continued his work in the garage even after the lights had gone out on the world.

On a few occasions, albeit rare, I remember Dad making me go into the yard with a flash light to pick up the toys I left in the yard. He never raised his voice. He never threatened me with physical violence. But he stood his ground. Or, on the occasion that he didn’t want to make me go in the yard, he would work out an alternate compromise.

“Okay, Bub. So you didn’t pick up your toys tonight, but I need to cut grass first thing in the morning. So even though it’s Saturday, you’re going to get up at 8 and go outside first thing and pick them up so I can mow. Okay?”

I would pleasantly agree, and then when Dad would come to wake me up at 8am, I would try to feign every illness in the world, including the plague, to get Dad to let me out of the chore. But he wouldn’t. He would sit on the bed next to me and continue to try and wake me up, until I eventually realized that he was never going to cave. I would then lumber out into the yard and grumble and call my Dad all kinds of horrible names while I picked up toys and slammed them with a childlike fury into the lockbox.

But even though I called him names, Dad never called me anything but Bub. He never let my poor attitude or actions frustrate him—and I’m ashamed of the way I acted. No matter how bratty I became, Dad had this cool-under-pressure consistency that, to this day, I’m still envious of. He’s one of very few parents I know of that could actually discipline his child through being disappointed in them—has that ever worked in the history of parenting?! Well, it did for my Dad, because he was the type of man whose disappointment spoke more than any anger he might have felt.

Dad’s decision to call me “Bub” in nearly every situation, pleasant or unpleasant, says something amazing about his parenting skill. Frustration and anger could not deter his goal of raising a son the way he knew that boy should be raised. Dad got more out of me because of his high expectation. He didn’t need anger to parent, and somehow it worked.

Looking back, I appreciate my Dad’s consistency more and more each day, and it’s a trait I admire in him. He didn’t have a dual view of his son. He didn’t see me as Bub when I was doing things right and Tyler when I was doing things wrong. I was Bub no matter what, because he understood that kids need to be taught—they need direction, guidance, and more than anything, they need a consistent and reliable father figure to push me down this road of maturity. And the fact that he greeted me the same way, no matter the circumstances, was refreshing, sending a subtle signal that he loved me unconditionally. My Dad was the dictionary definition of unconditional love—and I miss this about him tremendously.

Ultimately, in light of his death from suicide, I wish Dad could have had this same, consistent, unconditional view of himself. As I’ve tried to make sense of my Dad’s death (and I’ll never be able to actually “make sense” of it), I’ve speculated about what might have been going on inside my Dad’s head at different points in his life. Although I can’t be certain, and because of his mental illness, I think my Dad saw himself in two different lights. At times, I think he was able to see the positive impact he made on others; and at other times, unfortunately, I think he saw himself through an unlovable lens. I think he saw his imagined weaknesses as things that people defined him by.

But that was simply not the case—and it still isn’t the case today. My Dad, whether he was mentally healthy or mentally ill, was always, always worthy of love. His mental illness did not define him, and most importantly, it did not change the way anyone felt about him. I wish I could have shown him more of that unconditional love throughout his life. I wish I would have told him, more often, that he mattered. That I loved him. That in the good times, and in the bad, he was important to me.

My middle name, thankfully, is Scott. And I’m tremendously proud of that fact. In a sense, I feel like I’m carrying on a piece of my Dad just by carrying on his name. And because of that, I’ll continue to hold myself to those high standards that my Dad had for me. I’ll do my best to show unconditional love, like he did, to everyone I encounter. I’ll carry on the piece of him that was fun-loving and childlike and strong, and because I have a part of his name, I’ll continue to tell his story, and to spread his message. I’ll continue to define others by the good in their hearts. I’ll try my best to be patient and kind and even-keeled, just like he was. At times, it feels like a heavy burden to carry because my Dad truly was a great, great man; but if he believed in me enough to give me part of his name, I’ll trust that he knew what he was doing. He always did.

There’s a lot in a name, and I’m glad a third of mine is also my Dad’s.

And I’m thankful that Mom didn’t let him name me Kurt.

Dad, I’m sorry that you didn’t get to name me Kurt. Just kidding. I’m really glad you didn’t win that fight, because I don’t seem like much of a Kurt—even though I’m still not a maker of tiles. But to you, I was Bub, and I’ll always be that. You called me Bub all the time—whether I was an angel or a brat—and I don’t think I ever told you how much I appreciated that consistency. I want to tell you now. Bub was a term of endearment and affection to you, and the fact that you called me that—no matter the situation—meant you always, always loved me. I don’t know how you did it, but you always kept your patience with me, even when I tried to test it to the limits. Even though you’ve been gone for five years now, I can still hear you saying “Hey, Bub” and “Seeya, Bub” in that calm, familiar voice of yours; and the fact that I can still hear it is a reminder that, even though you’re gone, you still love me. You still love all of us. And you’re still helping us grow and love one another more through the example you left for us. I wish you were still here with us, though. I wish I could hear you call me Bub just once more—but I know, deep down, that I’ll hear it again, Dad. It’s going to be a tremendous greeting in Eternity when I see you again for the first time. I’m thankful to know that you’ll be there, and I’m thankful to know that you’ll still be calling me “Bub,” even in Heaven. Until then, there’s a lot of work to be done and love to be spread down here in your name, Dad. Keep watching over us, and in your subtle reminders, keep telling us that you loved us. We need it more and more. I love you, Dad. I’ll see you again someday—and until that glorious day, seeya Bub.