BunnyBlinks

Madison, Wisconsin, United States

In 2001, while still in graduate school in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, I began working at Union Cab of Madison Cooperative. I quickly befriended the night mechanic who later, early in the summer, of 2002, would ask me if I’d seen the TV show “Greg the Bunny”. She asked if I’d mind if she called me “Bunny.” I’d thus far made it happily through life without a nickname, but I liked her (we’re still good friends) and didn’t want to kill the fun. So I compromised, replying, “I don’t mind if you call me ‘Bunny.’” Emphasizing “you,” so I thought, ensured the word would be heard in its singular form.

The next Saturday I showed up to work for my evening shift. The mechanic was talking with a small group of drivers who were sitting around the green picnic table next to Union Cab’s driveway. Walking across the lot to greet them, I was met with a wonderful chorus of waves and shouts of  “Bunny!” (That group of hard-working second-shift drivers — who happened to all work Saturdays and be women — had its own nickname. I won’t repeat it here, since I don’t wanna risk it being read any less affectionately and respectfully than it was obviously intended by those who, long before I joined the coop, had coined it.)

I was assured that the nickname summed up perfectly my fun, happy personality (their words, not mine), which was nothing I wanted to argue against. Still, I initially viewed the nickname as little more than a useful tool to maintain anonymity on the job. If someone called me “Bunny,” I knew that I knew them from work, or perhaps they’d been a cab passenger. It could be an awkward experience when friends from my pre-Madison days would come visit, reliably confused when I’d answer to the name. “Bunny? Ooh, that’s Butch.” Or my Dad: “Bunny? Do I even wanna ask?”

It was an arbitrary connection between “Greg” and “Bunny,” but like a lot of arbitrary connections, it stuck.