T-Bone

At St. John’s Academy in Kansas City, Thomas Bohnsky is known simply as T-Bone.  As a young child and through most of elementary school, he had been called Tommy.  Tommy was an average kid, apart from having lost his mother at a young age.  He spent most of his time outside of school riding his BMX bike around the neighborhood with his friends, playing sports, and running free without getting into too much trouble.

Towards the end of fifth grade, the boys on his baseball team started calling him Bohnsky.  He found that he enjoyed having a nickname, even if it was just his last name, so he began introducing himself that way to encourage it.  Bohnsky felt more mature and was ready to move on to middle school, no longer considered little Tommy. 

During that summer before his sixth-grade year at St. John’s, Bohnsky decided to choose music as his fine arts elective and told his dad he intended to learn the trombone like his late mother.  He didn’t tell any of his friends about it, so when he showed up at the bus stop on the first day of school carrying the faded old trombone case, it was all anyone could talk about.  Bohnsky was well-liked, but he still took a little grief about it as the bus rattled its way to St. John’s.  As the boys filed lazily off the bus and into the crowd of students waiting outside the school, Bohnsky’s friend Archer finally pieced things together.  From that moment on, Tommy Bohnsky, who played the trombone, would be universally referred to as T-Bone. 

Unfortunately for T-Bone, he genuinely hated his new nickname, so that moment effectively changed who he was entirely.  Not all at once, but note by note and piece by piece, he would be torn down and rebuilt through the torment of his unwanted nickname.  It started right then, as he told Archer and his other friends he didn’t want to be called T-Bone.  Naturally, they argued the obvious case, over-sold the charm of such a perfect nickname, and insisted he would have to live with it.  T-Bone lashed out at his friends as he never had, said horrible and only partially true things about each of them, and claimed to never want to speak to any of them again. 

When his music teacher learned his name, he also lit up and made an announcement to the band, anointing Tommy henceforth as T-Bone.  Again, the band was delighted and many of the other students were envious of the nickname.  T-Bone, however, was mortified and stormed out.  Kids in the hall curiously watched T-Bone marching past with his trombone and laughed at him.  When a teacher stopped him to ask where he was going, he noticed all the attention he was getting and furiously threw the trombone into a trophy case before running away.

Tommy, in the span of only days, had gone from a likeable baseball player full of youthful hope, to a social outcast left with seasoned angst and a reputation for hilarious vandalism.  He quit the band and retreated into the shadows as much as he was able to.  Occasionally, someone would call him T-Bone at the wrong time or place, and T-Bone would unleash a beating so severe he’d get suspended from school.

His father would sign the disciplinary notes and meet with the principal apologetically.  He felt bad for Tommy and was the only one that truly understood what he was going through.  Tommy’s mother had been killed when he was in first grade.  Her station wagon was crushed from the side when the driver of a refrigerated truck full of steaks had fallen asleep and ran a red light.  Tommy really hated that nickname.

-          Written for “unfortunate Nickname”