Stiff Upper Lip

Nicknames are a funny thing. They can have a big impact on your life, but they can just as easily be forgotten relics of your past. Many people define themselves by their nicknames, many would like to pretend their nicknames don't exist.

In my freshman year at UNH, my roommate was an unfortunate fellow named Brian who fit most stereotypical definitions of the word "nerd": Huge glasses, painful-looking acne scarring, and a general social awkwardness that was hard to miss. Not that I was the Fonz or anything, but that kid was in tough from the start. But I was an open-minded guy and I was going to have to live with him for the rest of the year, so I was friendly and tried to make it work.

We were living in Alexander Hall, an all-male dorm. The first night of the school year, we decided to take a walk around campus just to check things out. It was dark out by this point and we were walking towards Williamson, one of the bigger dorms across campus, when we saw a couple sitting on a bench with their backs to us. They both had long hair. So Brian says, "Hello, ladies" in his most suave loverman voice. They turn around and it's a guy and his girlfriend. I almost fell down, I was laughing so hard. For poor Brian, it was a sign of things to come.

Faced with the fact that my roomie was an unmitigated dork, I came to the mature decision that I should mock him. The next day, I christened Brian with the nickname "Lip," which was a name that my high school buddy Tim used to call people. It basically was synonymous with "loser" or "nerd," but beyond Tim and our little high school circle of friends, it had no meaning. But man, did it stick with Brian. After a few days on our floor of freshmen, nobody called him by his given name anymore. He WAS Lip. And it just seemed to fit him perfectly.

I'm not looking back on this with pride, because I do feel bad that I picked on the kid, but he was dealt a tough hand to begin with. He was a computer science major, but unfortunately for him, he wasn't any good at it. And his parents had never let him stay up past 11 before, so to be suddenly set loose on a college campus with no rules was tough for him to deal with. It was tough for me, too, in that I liked staying up late and soon found that I couldn't stay awake in my 8 a.m. calculus classes (but that's a story for another day).

I don't think Lip had much, if any, prior experience with alcohol (again, neither had I). We had quickly begun hanging with different crowds. I made fast friends with the football players who lived right next door and the guys across the hall, so we were going to parties and generally whooping it up. Lip went to Nashua High, which had something like 100 kids at UNH as freshmen that year, so I guess he met up with someone he knew from those days and went to a party on the other side of campus on a Friday night early in the school year. I didn't know where he went and frankly, didn't care. But I did find it odd that he didn't come back to the room that night. Or the next day. It wasn't until Sunday that he returned and I learned that the Lipster had consumed a few mixed drinks and was found puking up blood in the dorm bathroom by an RA. He ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

I'm guessing his parents were notified because after that incident, Lip started going home every weekend. The jig was up. I didn't mind because we were able to use my room as a good venue for playing quarters or just drinking whatever crappy beer we could get our hands on. I had a dartboard on the inside of the door and we would mess with Lip by poking holes in a paper target and sticking it to the brand new lacquered loft his dad had made him. I still saw him during the week, but we didn't hang out much. After freshman year, I think he commuted from home because I never saw him again. And I heard that he dropped out after sophomore year.

Hopefully for Lip, he found something he was good at and forged himself a decent career and life. But unfortunately for him, he'll always be known as Lip to a group of about 20 guys who went to college at UNH in 1985-86.