What is a DelPennSotan, anyway?

(This was supposed to be my first post on this blog. If you read the post before it, you'll know that this one was temporarily "lost," in that I didn't know at the time where to find it.)

How do you decide what to use as a screen name? When I first started going to chat rooms and message boards online, I was pretty much only going to hockey-related sites. I'm a Philadelphia Flyers fan. I started out picking names that noted my favorite player. OttoFan29 was the first name I used (Joel Otto wore #29 for the Flyers at the time). He soon retired, and I became ForbesFan12 (for Colin Forbes). He got traded. I think all of this was within one calendar year. I got the hint.

What I needed, I figured, was something that simply designated me as a Flyers fan. I wanted to be a bit more inventive than just using some variation of "Flyers Fan." I also decided that, if I was going to identify with the team and not one player, it was important to me to choose a name that would indicate that I had been a fan prior to the new wave of fans who came along in the early 1990's when Eric Lindros showed up (it's a long story - maybe a later post). Broad Street Bully seemed perfect. The team had been known as the Broad Street Bullies in the mid- to late-1970's (their arena is on Broad Street in Philadelphia, and they were known then for a very agressive, rough style of play).

Right now you may be asking, "What in the world does all of this has to do with something called a DelPennSotan?" I'm getting there.

The problem with Broad Street Bully, I found out, was that it was generally taken. After some consideration, I went even more obscure, and settled on Walk Together Forever. When the Flyers won the Stanley Cup (the championship of the National Hockey League) in 1974, before the last game, their coach, Fred Shero, told them, "Win together today, and we will walk together forever." They did, and they have (and boy, are their legs tired!). That name brought a few problems of its own. First of all, almost nobody got it. The population on the Internets skews towards a generation that is not familiar with references from 1974. This seemed to be more true 8-10 years ago, when this was happening. Second, my name would typically be shortened by other posters to WTF, which often got misunderstood by third-party posters not involved in a particular conversation. Something like "WTF, I don't understand what you're talking about..." would lead other people to think I was getting attacked when that wasn't the case. Thirdly, some folks misinterpreted the name to be a refernce to a wife, or some sort of significant other, when no such person existed at the time. (Well, she existed, I just didn't know her. And anyone that knows us knows there ain't gonna be no Walk in any I'd name I'd have for the 2 of us. Sit On Our Fat Asses Together Forever, maybe. [But you can just call us SOOFATF.]) Some of the people who thought I was married or otherwise involved didn't take to kindly to the shameless flirting I would commonly do back then.

By this time, I had branched out and was posting and chatting in non-hockey-related places. At first, I would pick a name that had some connection to the place or central topic where I was posting. That got to be way too much to keep on top of. One universal name, where useable, was the way to go. I decided to go with whatever version of Broad Street Bully was available on a given site. But, the more time I spent on places where people didn't know or care about hockey, the more I found myself having to tediously explain my moniker over and over. And, outside of the context for which I first started using it, having Bully in a screen name can lead some people to incorrect assumptions that it's hard for a fella to live down.

So, once again, time for a change. Time to drop the hockey references. I don't do much hockey chatting any more. It's very hard anymore to find a rational conversation. A lot of people pick a name that's based on the one overriding passion in their life, but I've never had something that is "my thing," that people who know me immediately identify with me, and immediately think of me when that "thing" comes up in coversation or whatever. So I didn't have anything to go with in that regard. When all of this started, I lived in Delaware, which is where I grew up. After a time, I moved to Pennsylvania, which is actually where I was born and lived the first few years of my life. Later, I moved to Minnesota, where I've been for the past 4+ years. I had the thought to pick a name that would encompass my having been a DELawarean, a PENNsylvanian and a MinnesSOTAN. Hence, DelPennSotan. Despite what one of my friends thought, the "sotan" does not mean "so tan," though I do tend to darken up nicely in the summer if I'm out in the sun. My coloring seems to come from the Greek portion of my heritage, and when you put that under the sunshine, there's a very noticeable effect. Now that I think about it, maybe instead of where I've lived, I should have based my name on where my ancestors came from. ItalPolGreGland has a bit of a ring to it, doesn't it?

On the outside, this probably seems like a meaningless recitation of a progression of online identities that I have used. But on the inside, I can see that there is a bit more to this story. It's been about 10 years since I was OttoFan29. DelPennSotan is not OttoFan29, and in some significant ways, I am not the same person I was then, either. I see a lot of difference. I didn't even ID myself as me at first. I used another person. When that changed, I was very careful about the piece of myself that I identified, and what others were "supposed" to take from it. (As I said, it was VERY IMPORTANT to me with that first Flyers name that people know that I am a very particular type - or age, if you will - of Flyers fan.) Over time, when I was chatting with folks who are not hockey fans, the need to constantly explain my name led me to the realization that people who connect with me are not necessarily interested in only the pieces of me that I might have chosen to make available to them. Which brings us to this last name. It's all of me, my whole life, in a manner of speaking. None of these screen name decisions was a conscious attempt to do the things I've been talking about in this paragraph. But as I was thinking about it (my weekday commute is anywere from 45 to 90 minutes each way - I have a LOT of time alone with all manner of random thoughts), I came to the conclusion that they were probably not accidental, either. Each one seems to accurately have represented who I was ready to let people see me be at the time.

Thus, here I stand before you today - DelPennSotan. Again, it's all of me, my whole life, in a manner of speaking. Also not consciously but I believe not accidentally, it speaks only to where I've been and where I am. It says nothing about about where I am going. I'll have to find that out as I go along.