Dirty Diana

I'm not much of a nickname girl. Maybe it's because for the first 13 years of my life everyone knew me only by a nickname. That's right. You've all heard it. DeeDee.
That was the name I learned to write. It was on all my notebooks. People sometimes called me Dee - which was extremely odd years later when I discovered that was my stepdaughter's nickname.
Anyway, I shed the nickname when we moved to Charlotte when I was 13. It was at this time that I pictured the older me. The successful business woman me being called DeeDee. The Superior Court judge me with DeeDee on her name plate. The 60 year old me possibly lacking respectability because of my name.
So, I decided I would become Diane.
Diane is my middle name. I was named after my loving aunt who died of cancer when I was too young to remember her. I'm told she loved me like I was her own. She loved to babysit me and tell people that I was hers. She was a beautiful blonde.
My first name, Dorothy, was given to me in honor of my grandmother. Oddly, I was really never close to her. She was a hot, partying redhead who liked to drink, smoke and play cards. I feel she would be someone I would've wanted to be friends with in another circumstance.
So Dorothy Diane became DeeDee for more than a decade.
These days, I'm straight up Diane. A few people call me by nicknames. Dee and DeeDee have stuck with some. My friend Carla gave me a nickname back when I was 16 that she still uses when I call her up - Dirty Diana.
I was not a "dirty" teen so don't get the wrong idea. But you know. Michael Jackson sang the song and it was catchy.

I thought of my nickname yesterday when I was out working on a story. I was at a shooting range writing about guns. (Well, getting material for the story. I still haven't written it. I'm supposed to be writing it right now actually.)
For the first 30 minutes I was the only woman there. Lots of guys kept coming in. They would buy boxes of bullets then go into the room with the targets and start firing. There were all sorts of targets. Some with shapes. Others with animals. The ever popular person silouette. There were some funny ones for sale that no one bought while I was there. One with a guy who had a turbin on. Another alien-looking dude.
So I'm not a gun person, but I got a little excited when the manager offered to let me shoot. He showed me the tiny bullets he was going to let me use. I saw the ear muff things and the safety glasses. I started getting anxious and antsy.
I started picturing myself as a type of female Dirty Harry. Yeah. Dirty Diana firing off some rounds.
Turns out, the manager was all sorts of busy and I got tired of waiting.
So I took a raincheck.
I hope to invoke my inner Dirty Diana in the future. But you can call me Diane.