Mike or Shafe were my only two...until I started dating Debby. We were married for nearly forty years...she is tall at 5’8”, auburn haired with freckles on her nose, hazel eyes. We divorced several years ago...amicably. She could easily pass for 40, but is closing in on 70....which is very annoying. Anyway, her Dad and consequently Deb always called me Mik, pronounced Mick. Her current partner is younger than our youngest son...and I always refer to him as my third son. A really nice guy. I was quite proud recently when Deb stuck her finger in my face and said, “He’s just like you.” Well, yes he is, and I already knew that. Still made me smile...at least she is consistent. Oh, and when in her late twenties she had a beautician match her hair color, so it ain’t changed at all. Did I mention she was annoying? One other annoying trait...she doesn’t read anything but Medical books...has no training, and I would trust her diagnoses over any Doctor. On the flip side of that is a lady I watched over after my friend, and her husband died. Before he died he had asked me to watch over her, which I did for several years before cancer took her. She was an operating room nurse in Baltimore. She had no genealogy information...both of her parents were adopted. She was a duplicate of Debby, except she was 5 feet to Deb’s 5 feet 8 inches. Both ladies possessed quick wits with great senses of humor and were mirror images of each other...except for the height thing.

You left me kind of speechless. Everyone else, too, it would seem. The only thing I give you is an old nautical blessing that we use even now in the Navy. May you have fair winds and following seas.

It's funny, my dad used to call me bean. Probably because he always had my head buzzed at the barbershop. And really funny because when i was
about 30 Years old i got into a fight at this high end hotel bar i worked at and the guy was on PCP and i was lucky to get away from him. But the thing is, he almost pulled my hair out. Well, the police arrived and he beat up the first two police, then it took two more cops to wrestle him down. So I went down town after work and got my head buzzed and I've kept it that way because it just feels so darned good. And no the nickname disappeared, thankfully.

My brother, Earl, always had his buzzed until he started paying for it himself. He keeps it well manicured now. Earl’s nickname was Bub. I don’t have a clue where it came from, but he is a Junior..Earl F. Shaffer Jr. For some reason Dad didn’t want me named for anyone...we found out thirty years later that the first known in our line at the start of the 19th century was Michael with no middle name. Dad decided I should have the Lee middle name...after the two Lee’s that signed the Declaration of Independence...we are direct descendants of Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee. My sister, Linda, also carried the Lee name forward as has my son, Trevor. Robert E. Lee was a distant cousin. It is from my Great Grandmother that our lineage can be traced to a Viking, Rollo, the First Duke of Normandy. Kind of odd that we owned a row boat until the late 1960s. After we moved to a suburb of Baltimore from Magothy Beach, Dad took it out to the deepest part of the Magothy River in Maryland, sank it and swam back to shore to keep it from being stolen...never have figured that out, but he didn’t want a guy we called Fat Jack to lay claim to it. Fat Jack is long dead, and a new house is on his property now, but his old rundown shack is still standing. He would lay claim to old row boats and tar the sides to keep them afloat, so he could rent them out. lol. Life on the River. lol. Years later Dad bought land on what was a swampy back river on the Severn. After we moved he sold it for a song because a friend had dug out the swamp deep enough to get a row boat in and out. Dad, ever the astute business man, sold it for a profit of about 7000 dollars, after decades of warnings from his Grandmother, Nettie B. Hill of Virginia, to “Never sell land!” About two years later the State dredged out the swamp, making it waterfront. How much was it worth then? I don’t want to talk about it.

Lol!!!

Bub may have been short for Bubba. I knew a fella that everyone called Bubbie. Years later I was told that it was common back in the day for the oldest son to be called Bubba or some form of that. It started with the younger siblings. Parents would refer the older their brother simply as "your brother". And, when the siblings were very young they would call the older brother "Bubba" because that was how they pronounced "brother". And, the parents just picked up on it and it would stick. Similarly, the oldest girl would be "Sister" or "Sissy". My mother and her next oldest sister always referred to the oldest (of 3) sisters as "Sister" until the day they passed.

Yup! We made fun of our youngest sister calling her a sissy and then Sis, but when she was about five she changed it to Cis, and it stuck to this day. Her given name is Cecilia.