How I Got the Nickname Sack: A Love Story

Some time ago I was asked how I got the nickname Sack. Well, I think it is about time to tell the story. You may want to grab a Coke and a bag of popcorn, this may take some time. I need to give you a little bit of back story first and I'm sure there will be a few side trips along the way.

So, there I was, a young freshman at the University of Nebraska. In high school I worked at the Don and Millie's in Omaha. Upon moving to Lincoln for school, I was able to transfer to the D&M in Edgewood. At the time, I was kind of a punk and thought I knew everything. Plus the Omaha store I worked at was the busiest in town so I did actually know everything. Brian was the resident cool guy so we had a few run ins at the beginning as he was stuck in his small town ways and I was simply trying to hook him up with some better process flow. Luckily, we moved past our differences quickly after uniting over a few Blue and Chromes. I think that night that sealed our friendship was an after hours party at the apartment I shared with my sister Mindy. Why my sister let me move in with her I still don't know, but it was pretty cool not having to live in the dorms. This particular night, we didn't have any firewood for our fireplace. So, Brian and I went out on a recon mission and "borrowed" some from our neighbors (kids don't try this at home). After running through that, we had an old rocking chair that was in poor repair. We decided to smash that up and use it as firewood. Good stuff there. The rest, as they say, is history. After that time Brian and I were the best of friends.

Now, I'm a little hazy on the actual timeline, but I think we need to fast forward about 6 months. When I first started at Don and Millie's, one of my first shifts I believe, I met the most beautiful girl in the world. At this time I decided that she would be mine, oh yes, she would be mine. By winter time, there was a whole group of us that were hanging out together. We would all (me, B, Criztoval Gunitoa Sanchez, T/D-Huh, Beautiful Girl, and any others that were around) close on Friday nights and then go party. We would fill up a 320z drink cup with frozen strawberry margarita to go and be on our way. Tip of the day: if you own a business that sells alcohol don't ever leave a 19 year old in charge, no matter how mature they may seem. Seriously, don't do it. Often times we went to the beautiful girl's house because she had 3 roommates and people old enough to buy us beer. But, the key is we usually all hung out together. I had to open Saturday morning so I usually got the worst end of the deal, we would stay out until all hours of the night and then I had to be up at 7:00. Everyone else got to sleep in and then laugh at me when they came in somewhat well rested later in the day and could see that I looked like I had slept in a dumpster and then ran 6 miles to work. Jerks.

Now, the group slowly started to disintegrate on Friday nights when B broke up with his high school girlfriend. I may have been partly responsible due to the time that I was driving to work and I saw her and B driving in her car. I honked and waved and got no repsonse. I was a little bit miffed, so when I saw B later that night, I was all like, whats up with the no wave. And he was all like what are you talking about. And I said I saw you and your girl driving on 10th street. He said, I wasn't on 10th street. Uh oh. So of course when he confronted her later I ended up being the bad guy, like it was my fault for being nice. Things were never the same after that. Which worked out good for me because I didn't like her anyway. She was one of B's 16 exs at the hospital the night I stabbed him, I'm sure to this day she is convinced that I did it on purpose. Which I did so she would be right. Hey, I won right? Okay, back to the story. So Brian and T-bone started seeing each other that winter/spring. There was then pressure to hang out at Ts place because it was right across the street from ol' D and M. A lot of nights I had to choose between my plan to continue to woo the beautiful girl and hanging out with B. Some nights we all hung together, some nights we split up. This particular night, the night I was glossed the Sack, was one of the nights we went our seperate ways.

On the night in question, we were doing the usual, playing presidents and assholes, drinking cheap beer, making fun of people from Wyoming, and talking about the freakin' National Champion Husker football team (we won 2 national titles my first 2 years at UNL by the way, coincidence, I think not). The beautiful girl was hungry, and wanted to make the requisite trip to Amigos for a midnight soft taco. I don't remember if I was hungry or not because there was nothing that was going to stop me from driving her there and buying her tacos, in the hopes that she would fall madly in love with me and I could move out of the dreaded friends zone. I think there were others in the car but can't remember who else was there. When we returned from our little trip to our horror Lincoln's finest were at the house handing out MIPs. Well, maybe not MIPs but that sounds better than telling everyone to go home. We of course cruised around for a while until the 5-0 had done their business. So by the time we got back, we had been gone about 2 hours.

Now we get back to the house, and get the run down of what we missed. We heard about the usual, somebody puked, somebody else got in a fight, somebody fell down the stairs, etc, etc. The one thing that was odd was that they kept getting prank phone calls from someone. They went along the lines of, "I want the Sack", "Gimme the Sack", "Where's the Sack?" You get the picture. Nobody had any idea who it was or why they were calling, other than the fact that the person was incredibly inebriated. Keep in mind this was before every infant was issued a cell phone at the hospital along with their shots and birth certificate and I don't remember there being caller ID but I could be wrong on that. I'm a little fuzzy on the actual turn of events, but I think eventually I answered the phone and realized that it was B and that for some reason I was the Sack. This is probably a little bit anti-climatic, but to this day I really don't know where he came up with it. I don't think he does either. I asked a few times and he could never give me an answer. But, the name stuck, and to my college buddies and Lincoln friends I will forever be known as the Sack. So there you have it, in 1500 words or less. You probably feel cheated having read all the way down here for me just to say I don't know but it is my blog so I'll do what I want. Plus I'm guessing most of you just skipped down the end anyway.