TooTall

I have a biker name now.

Apparently, I'm TooTall.

Kate "TooTall" Sjostrand.

And I am entirely too fucking pleased about this.

For those who don't know, you don't get to make up your own biker name. That's not how this shit works. Really, that's not how nicknames work anywhere. You don't walk into a room and announce, "Hey everybody, from now on I'd like you to call me Thunder."

Well, I suppose you can.

But everyone is going to think you're a fucking idiot.

Nicknames are given to you by other people. Sometimes because of something you did. Sometimes because of some physical characteristic. Sometimes because somebody said something stupid once and the goddamned thing stuck.

The military works the same way.

I had two nicknames during my time in the Navy. In boot camp, I was "Jockstrap."

Yes.

Fucking Jockstrap.

I'm not going to explain that one right now.

Later, on the submarine, I was "Swede."

Neither of those names was something I selected from a list of approved options. They were given to me by the people around me, and once the group decides that's your fucking name, congratulations.

That's your fucking name.

But there's something else happening when a group gives you a name: Acceptance.

They're acknowledging you.

They're telling you, in their own strange little way, that you're not just some random person standing at the edge of the group anymore.

You're someone they know.

You belong.

And that's why getting a biker name yesterday meant considerably more to me than I expected it to.

I've written a lot about the biker community and how unexpectedly accepting I've found it to be. I show up at these events and functions and mostly just try to be a good fucking human being.

That's generally how I try to approach life.

I'm pretty mellow.

Right up until I'm fucking not.

But especially when I'm walking into a group of people I don't know, I'm cautious. I watch. I listen. I figure out the dynamics of the room before I start being completely and unapologetically me.

It's one of the few circumstances in life where you'll find me relatively quiet.

Unknown people are unknown variables.

And I like understanding the fucking variables.

Yesterday was exactly that kind of situation.

Dawna and I went to a memorial for a fallen biker.

I didn't know the young man being remembered, and I don't want to pretend that I did. This wasn't my loss. Dawna is close with this group, though, and I went with her.

That meant something else to me as well.

I was entering someone else's grief.

So I tried to treat it with the respect it deserved.

I watched.

I listened.

And it didn't take very long before I realized I was surrounded by some incredibly good fucking people.

Seriously.

Good people.

Genuine people.

There wasn't any of the bullshit posturing you see in so many other parts of society. No office politics. No grandstanding. Nobody trying desperately to demonstrate how important they were.

Just a group of people coming together to remember someone they loved.

They laughed.

They told stories.

They grieved.

They celebrated a life.

They took care of one another.

Amazing humans doing amazing human things.

And I fucking loved being around them.

That's one of the things I've come to appreciate about the biker community. For all the bullshit stereotypes people have about bikers, I've found a remarkably simple code underneath a lot of it.

Be real.

Respect people.

Stay the fuck out of other people's business unless you're invited into it.

And when somebody needs you, fucking show up.

Honestly, that's considerably more appealing to me than a lot of the increasingly complicated rules the rest of society seems determined to invent for interacting with one another.

Throughout the afternoon, I had some incredible conversations and slowly started becoming a little less quiet.

You know, becoming me.

The gathering was being held at one man's shop, and it was obvious pretty quickly that he commanded a tremendous amount of respect from the people around him.

Not demanded.

Commanded.

There's a fucking difference.

Nobody had to tell me he was respected. You could see it in the way people interacted with him. And in my conversations with him, I understood why. He was incredibly gracious. Welcoming. Genuine.

At some point during the afternoon, apparently he decided I needed a name.

He started calling me TooTall.

And there it was.

My biker name.

TooTall.

Now, I realize this isn't exactly the most cryptic fucking nickname anyone has ever devised.

I'm six-foot-one.

There probably wasn't an extensive committee deliberation involved.

But that's not the fucking point.

The point is that I didn't name myself.

Someone else did.

Someone within this community looked at me and decided I wasn't just "Dawna's fiancée" or "that really fucking tall woman over there."

I was TooTall.

And I answered.

Because that's how this works.

There's something wonderfully human about all of this. We create these little tribes throughout our lives. Military units. Work crews. Motorcycle groups. Pool teams. Families we were born into and families we somehow assemble along the way.

And within those tribes, we develop our own language.

Our own traditions.

Our own ways of telling somebody: You're one of us.

Sometimes it's a handshake.

Sometimes it's an invitation.

Sometimes it's someone making room for you beside them.

And sometimes, apparently, it's a respected biker looking at a six-foot-one woman and deciding her fucking name is TooTall.

I'll take it.

What makes it mean even more to me is the day on which it happened.

This wasn't some random night at a bar.

This was a memorial.

I was allowed into a space filled with grief, memory, friendship, and love for someone I never had the opportunity to know.

And while I was there, these people welcomed me.

That isn't something I take lightly.

So thank you.

Thank you for allowing me into your space.

Thank you for letting me stand among you while you remembered someone you loved.

Thank you for the conversations, the laughter, the stories, and the glimpse into your world.

And thank you for the name.

Kate "TooTall" Sjostrand.

Yeah.

I can fucking live with that.