Although many of you may not know this, or may have forgotten this, or really just don't care, believe it or else my nickname used to be Skip.

Jason "Skip" Shugars.
All through junior high and high school, I was known as Skip. By friends, enemies, and teachers alike. Skip Shugars.
Or the many alternates such as:
The Skipmeister.
Baron von Skippington.
The Skipper.
Skippy Penis Butter (my personal fave).
And so on.

Now you can imagine a world where someone with the last name Shugars might actually have nicknames pertaining to the chemical element Sugar (S). If you did imagine that world you would be wrong. Oh so wrong.
I'm sure you'd snort in derision at the tomfoolery of high school students for not taking advantage of such a target rich environment like the last name "Shugars". I would. Hell, I did. I used to snort in derision all the time.

Until one fateful day in 8th grade English class when I wrote a little article for the school newspaper about something of little or no consequence where I referred to myself as "Jason 'the skip' Shugars reporting...".
From that day onward, and I mean immediately, the name Skip stuck like glue.
It didn't matter I was trying to refer to myself as "The Scoop". It didn't matter that a lowly 7th grader found it so funny he couldn't stop using it which led to it's popularity. It didn't matter that I was a lowly 8th grader and of no consequence to anyone. It simply didn't matter.

From that day forward Skip Shugars was born and wouldn't die until I left for college. Friends would call my house and ask for Skip and infuriate my mother. People I didn't know, which was hard in a school/town our size, would saunter up and high five the Skipster. Teachers would wink knowingly at Skipper, as if having a nickname somehow allowed me entrance into a secret adult club of sorts. A manhood test perhaps? Girls, nay, women! would giggle demurely as Skip passed by them in the halls. Okay that last part's bullshit, but I liked where it was going.

Skip I was and Skip I am.
To this day when going back to my hometown of Ellicottville, NY people still refer to me as Skip. New Mexico, San Diego, the Bay Area; these locations know nothing of my alter ego. Never have, never will.

But in a little ski town in upstate NY a skinny, hair-having, blue-eyed white kid who drives a blue Ford Ranger with a busted passenger side window with empty beer cans in the back named Skip Shugars...well, he lives on.
Rock on Skip. Rock on.