Cocoa,Kokoo It's All BANANAS

I don't know if it was because I was born smack dab in the middle of 10 kids but it seemed like I was I trying to get attention or in some cases blend into whatever system I Happened To find myself ensconced. Sadly my motorcycle accident in 1966 gave me more attention that I would ever want. I truly became an individual in my own right. However I still wanted to be known for something totally me. In high school I took to wearing this huge stupid cowboy hat actually it was not a cowboy hat it was an Aussie hat which is sort like a cowboy hat, you know flat on one side. I thought it looked cool. I wore a green beret that my brother got me from Fort Bragg North Carolina. The real thing I even purchased the hardware and pinned it on. I didn't know enough to get a flash to go with it. When that became uncool I were just a regular French beret and then a black watch cap thinking I Looked like Michael Parks from the movie “Then Came Bronson”. It seemed I wanted to be and look like anything that I wasn't.

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one where George is trying to acquire some form cool name recognition. This was a funny episode especially for me because I totally understood George and what he was going through and why so much wanted some level of fame that would make him cool. Interestingly if I remember correctly he inadvertently got the name “Coco” which was the name of a monkey that the famous monkey anthropologist, Jane Goodall, was working with and taught to communicate. Great episode.

I wanted to be cooler than I deserved luckily however I grew out of that phase and settled on whatever name seem to get tagged to me. Shrink, Marco, Mark Anthony, Lancer and a host the names I've forgotten along the way. I worked a number of jobs where I would have to use a pseudonym when I was on the phones that was always sort of cool I like that but was always glad to come around a good old “Mark” at the end of my work session.

This may be my imagination I don't know but it seems like my hair has gotten whiter over the winter so much so that this year when I “browned up” I really looked darker than usual, Or maybe it's the fact that this year is really the first year that I have not shaved my head during the summer. So, I don't know what I look like when my tan would deepen. Either way I never paid much attention to the phenomenon until the other day. I believe I've written about sitting up by my van and reading. I didn't realize many people took note of this. Anyway, yesterday I was actually reading under the canopy eight by the back door in the shade and one of the older seniors here at the complex walk by with her little rat dog and revisited briefly. During the conversation she mentioned the fact that people had taken to calling me Koko because I've darkened up so much and I look kind of chocolatey I guess. That sort of cool in that I found out my truly needs and it would make sense. Kind of cool to have a nickname now, aside from the one senior known else brought up this issue but I suppose it will come up sometime during the summer and I've going to embrace being called Koko, the sign language monkey even though the seniors .