'Look, I'm not Italian, I am somewhat chubby but I am 5'11' so I don't think I can be called 'Meatball'.  I hereby request I get my name changed to 'Mental'.  Let me say, I am not at all normal and people who know me know I'm not right.  'Mental' is a proper nickname for me.'. 

And thus, Steve Miazza went from Meatball to Mental.  Actually, we called him Meatball to his face and Mental behind his back.   Because, well, you know.

These days, many people are getting really formal.  If you call a girl named Pamela 'Pam', she might never forgive you.  You get the frosty look and she reminds you 'It's Pamela' ('you dummy' is implied).  Might as well call her Meatball.  It's the same punishment and you get a good laugh.

I had 2 roommates freshman year, one was Vinny and one was Jeff, or Happy.  Happy was from Tully and going to Clarkson College (now University) and he was Not Happy.   He missed his family and dropped out after 1 semester. 

I've played racquetball and tennis, I decided to try squash.  I ran into a 70+ guy who called himself the White Wizard due to his white hair.  He kicked my butt.  He really was a wizard in squash.  In the 70+ set, white hair is sexy.  Men and women both dye their hair white to look cool.  They look down on brunettes, blonds and redheads. 

I think nicknames are illegal now.  I worked with a guy named Terry, who was Native Indian.  He had a temper and so we called him Chief Runamok.  He liked it.  You can't do that anymore.  Even if Terry asked us to call him that at work, we'd have to decline. 

I had an old college friend named Steve Cummings, whose nickname was Mort.  We got so used to calling him Mort, we forgot that was his nickname and not his real name.  So we gave him another  nickname, Crazy because he was a wildman.  So he had a nickname for his nickname.  After he got engaged he settled down and his fiancee named Gene made us call him Steve, which we never got used to.  May as well called him Mr Cummings.  

We also had an engineer who led a software group, his named was Moose, because he was big.  When we quoted the Moose, we'd speak slowly in a lower voice.  And we would open our hands and place our thumbs near our temples, creating antlers.  Here's the strange part.  Newbies would wonder about the hands and lower voice.  We'd explain 'Mark Carson is the Moose and when we quote Moose, we use antlers'.  Younger female engineers loved quoting the Moose with antlers.  I think they would go out of their way to quote him just to do the antlers.  Older male project managers Never used antlers to quote Moose, either because it was beneath them or they didn't know what antlers were. 

Pat would say this is typical, females are better communicators.