Go ahead and call me ‘Jay,‘ I’ll just smile and nod

Ray J. Johnson Jr. became popular in the late 1970s for his saying "You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, but you doesn't hasta call me Johnson." Allow me to indulge myself and riff on this for a bit.

I've had the unfortunate coincidence since the beginning of e-mail to have my address almost always be jsay@someplace. It all started at my first job. On my first day as a "true" worker bee, I checked my e-mail, waiting for something, anything to come in. I finally got a message, only it was addressed to "Jay." Shrugging it off, I mailed back - Thanks, "Jeff."

A few minutes later, I got a reply to that e-mail, but again it was addressed to "Jay."

And despite changing jobs, and repeated notes that my name was not, in fact, "Jay," it's continued.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not mean, and I would never call anyone out, so when they call me "Jay," I just smile and nod. That will probably never change, I would never want to embarrass anyone by saying "um, that's not my name."

But, allow me to explain why "Jay" causes a small grin to cross my face every time I get an e-mail with the incorrect misnomer attached to it.

If my last name was Smith, or Johnson, or Timberlake or anything but Say, I wouldn't care. But for some reason, "Jay Say" sounds so ridiculous it makes me laugh. At one point in time, when I was a freshman in high school, someone tried to nickname me "Jay."

Thankfully, it didn't stick.

But a few weeks later, after finding out I was allergic to peanuts (another column for another time), another classmate christened me "Skippy." That stuck.

In fact when I was home for Easter, my buddy Rich had his annual Easter get-together at his house. A few of his younger brother's friends came to visit and the introductions started.
"This is Skippy, and his wife."

Now, during high school I was cool with Skippy. In fact everyone knew me as Skippy. But as I got older, the name got to be a hindrance. Imagine trying to get a date. I know this conversation probably happened more than once.

Random girl: "Hi, nice to meet you, I'm "blah-blah."

Me: "Hi, I'm Skip."

Friend from behind me: "Hey, Skippy."

Girl: Uncontrollable laughter.

It probably didn't help that I looked like a reject from a Star Trek convention, but from there on out I vowed to ditch "Skippy."

Which I somehow did in college, but every time I went home it was still Skippy, or eventually Skip. It got so bad that if my friends mentioned me by my real name, everyone just stared at them with a blank look in their eye. It was only when my friends would say "you know, Skippy" that everyone went "ooohhhh, you mean Skippy."

I'm almost 30 and people still call me Skippy. I'm almost 30, if you're insisting on calling me by my high school nickname, please shorten it to Skip. Skippy sounds like a 10-year-old.
So, as I've avoided one nickname (and a slew of others in college, only "Oldman" stuck long enough to make an impact), another has attached itself to me.

"Jay" wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't the name of my wife's ex-boyfriend. So you can imagine the confusion if she calls me "Jay." Not fun times in the Say household.

But outside of introducing myself like James Bond - "the name is Say, Jeff Say" - I've run out of options to make sure people get my name right. So go ahead and call me "Jay," I'll probably just smile and nod.

Jeff Say wrote this with tongue firmly in-cheek. You can call him whatever you want, just don't call him late for dinner. He can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 115 or at .