Daily writing prompt

What’s the story behind your nickname?

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I think I wrote about this way back somewhere, the cursed nickname I had in junior high, chicken plucker. The reasons for it are obvious, I plucked chickens when I was a kid and actually thoroughly enjoyed helping out with the task.

I suppose one Monday, after a weekend spent plucking chickens, I was exchanging stories with classmates about what we did on the weekend and they found my story hilarious. They started calling me chicken plucker.

I didn’t see what the big deal was but these were town kids, not farm kids so they couldn’t possibly understand. I was a kid who didn’t get grossed out easily and I loved spending time with my gramma and being as helpful and grown up as possible. It sounds dark maybe but it was entertaining for me to watch the chickens hop around once they’d been beheaded by my grampa or uncle, “like a chicken with it’s head cut off”. Eventually they bled out and stopped.

Plucking is quite tedious and I actually preferred gutting the chickens to the plucking of feathers. These were cool fall days and getting to stick your hand inside the warm chicken to pull out the entrails felt good. And less finicky work than making sure when you plucked, you got all the pin feathers and such.

Thank goodness that nickname never really stuck but kids teased a lot in those days and it was just one of several names I’d been called.