WALTER

Vinny Shrimp had hated his nickname which maybe goes without saying--goes without saying, that is, if you lived in the same neighborhood.


The name his mother gave him was Donald--or Don...Donnie even.  It's a name he liked because it was his father's name and the name of his favorite baseball player ever--Donald Arthur Mattingly, also known as Don and even sentimentally as "Donnie Baseball."


He started being called "Vinny" after a period of time being called "Vincent," same as Vincent De Gallo, the obese car salesman with the combover who sold Vinny Shrimp's boss, Charles "Chassis" Cooke, his Cutlass Supreme that same summer that Donald aka "Vinny" Shrimp Jr.'s father, Donald Shrimp Sr. died in a car accident on the Belt Parkway, also driving an Oldsmoblie though not a Cutlass S. of course since Sr. was a day laboring welder--more of a union hall sloucher really.


Chassis thought that since Don Jr. had a bit of a weight problem and a German nose similar to De Gallo's, that it would be funny to start calling Don Jr. "Vincent," for the first week, and then "Vinny."  So much so (funny that is) that eventually everyone used the name which then just became his actual name, though it wasn't.


The fact that Chassis could be so insensitive as to effectively change his name for him right after the father who actually gave him his real name had died in an accident in a car of the same MAKE as the one that Chassis had purchased from the disgusting person whose name he now carried around like so much psychological baggage was no surprise since Chassis was THAT guy in the neighborhood - you know, the one who ran it effectively, through influence peddling, protection and bookmaking - "the rackets" they call it.


So what could he do?


Strangely, no one had ever thought to make fun of his last name.  No one, that is, since Frankie Lombardi, the kid in first grade who started calling him "Scampi" in the lunchroom and then at least 10 times on the playground before (then-)Don pushed him hard enough from behind to drive his face (his nose mostly) into the red brick of the school building.  "Scampi" was actually a pretty creative nickname and Don didn't actually get the joke--no one did really.  But it did SOUND funny and therefore required some action otherwise it would stick.


Don had one of those moments of clarity years later ordering from the menu of what he thought, then, was an upscale Miami Beach restaurant (since it was for him relative to the McDonalds and diner food that comprised the sum total of his childhood "dining out" experience) and noticed "Shrimp Scampi" (served with pasta & salad, your choice of dressing) on the "House Specialities" portion of the menu and all at once remembered Frankie Lombardi's dad's restaurant "Lombardi's" in Howard Beach, and Frankie's from-then-on crooked nose and ahead-of-his-time orthodonture (there had been teeth on the playground blacktop along with blood from the nose too) and it just CLICKED and he laughed and laughed at Frankie's joke, and he kept laughing even after the maitre-D came over to ask him "is everything alright, sir?" which actually embarrassed the "escort" Don had hired to go to the fight with him to the point that she called him "a fucking asshole" and left.  Don had ordered the Scampi and had Thousand Island on his salad, had chuckled through the whole meal and then found a hooker off the street to go with him to the fight, saving himself money since he didn't have to buy her dinner.  All in all a good night.


Everyone knew the story.  If he had had a moment of self-reflection for a second in his life Don would know that was why no one had ever made fun of his last name.  Why it had taken years and the stature of the neighborhood Don to actually tag him again.  He might have even delved into the psychology of Chassis and realized he (Chassis) didn't want anyone else in the neighborhood being called "Don" although no one actually called Chassis that since he was Irish and didn't go in for any of that greaseball bullshit.  And he might not have been so surprised when, after Vincent De Gallo was found with his face smashed, in a pool of blood and teeth, at the foot of the brickwall behind Cicci's Automart, people stopped calling him Vinny, though they didn't call him Don then either.


But he never would have been able to figure out why everyone had started calling him "Walter."