Through the years my mother has called me many different things, there was Spacey-Tracey, Tracer-Tots, and sometimes she just called me Tracey. But usually she called me NIB. I think back now and laugh at the nick name and how it came to be, but when I was younger I didn’t think NIB was something I wanted to be called. It all started when I was two, and I started talking in words people could actually understand.

I walked out of the fancy restaurant, and shivered.
“Cold,” I said as we walked out.

“Would you like to borrow my jacket?” my mother had asked.
I simply nodded my head and ducked into the safety of the pink polyester. I was quite hot in this jacket, but waited two minutes, before handing the jacket to my mother.


“I’m hot now,” I complained as I crawled into the car.
My mother just gave me a strange look, and then simply shrugged her shoulders. That was when I began the trend of being NIB, though the nickname had yet been developed.


When I was eight, my mother came in to tuck me in. She found that I was already asleep, and that only half of my body was under the covers. She turned around to leave, when I slowly got out of bed and turned on the fan; she tried talking to me, but quickly realized I was sleepwalking. She sat on the floor and observed my sleeping patterns for one hour, in that hours she says that I got up four times to either turn my fan on or turn my fan off. On that day she realized that for me there is only really hot or really cold. My mother observed me very often from then on. When we were in restaurants she usually saw me shiver. When we were in movies, she usually saw me shiver. And when we were at the park, she usually saw my either drinking a cool glass of water or fanning myself. Although she never actually told me this, I know she secretly classified me as, weird from that year on.


At the age of thirteen I was classified in my mom’s book as NIB. We were walking to school and I delicately put the light jacket over my shoulder as we passed the row of shady trees. As we neared the sidewalk, the sun started to shine over head. My mom quickly glanced over as I stopped and moaned. I took the jacket off and kept trucking through the rocky landscape. My mom watched me with almost concerned eyes. I almost instantly felt a cool wind bite my nose and brush across my cheek. I nearly growled this time, as I not so politely put the jacket back on. Within seconds the wind had passed, and I ripped the jacket off so fast, and with so much force that it actually ripped. I loved that jacket, and so from irritation of it ripping I stomped all over it. Luckily no one was around to see this childish act.

“Stop,” my mother said as she placed a firm yet gentle hand on my shoulder.

“What’s up,” she said. “It’s 80 degrees outside, with a slight breeze. A perfect temperature, not too cold to have to wear a jacket, but not too hot to not wear a jacket if that’s what you so choose.”

“It’s not a perfect temperature,” I snap. “It’s either too hot without the shade, or too cold with the shade. But I feel absolutely no in between, I never have and probably never will.”

“NIB,” she said.

“Excuse me? I ask.

“That’s your new nickname, NIB.” She says. “For you, temperatures are either hot or cold, but nothing in between. So from now on I will call you NIB, as in nothing in between.”
She smiles. I go silent.

That is how I became NIB, an interesting nickname, to go along with an interesting background.