Meet a Gypsy, Love a Gypsy, Pay a Gypsy

Cheeks and the more obvious Abs. Those have pretty much been my consistent nicknames since forever. Cheeks a variant on Chica, coming from an odd encounter with my high school football coach. Interpret that how you will. Abs. Well. If you can’t figure that one out. You’re stupid.

Of course there have been others, or people specific names. Emily and Jennifer call me Gabbey or Gabbeygail. My guy friends in elementary school used to call me Crabby Abbey (or Hacked off Hesser). In college a lot of my friends called me Yankee (because everything north of Texas is “the North” and since Oklahoma, albeit still a southern state, is north of Texas, I am a yankee). I probably hated Yankee the most. Even more than Hacked off Hesser.

Ya, I’ve had my fair share of nicknames. But not one has been more appropriately accurate than Gypsy.

I’m not sure who coined it first, but I’m going to give credit to Justin. Justin’s been around through all my nickname days (is likely guilty of having called me Crabby Abbey at some point) having been a friend of mine since we were… well… like 7.

Anyway. The backstory.

I bought a car in Spain. A good solid reliable car I bought from someone I knew, I knew the history, I knew they took good care of it. I bought the car on a Monday. On the Tuesday. driving down to the grocery store for the first time, I found my power steering and air conditioning go out and my emergency light came on. I drove it to the garage to find that my timer belt had broken somehow and I was going to be out about €500 to fix it.

Fine.

Bad luck. Yes. But fine. It’s a very used car. It hadn’t had problems in over 4 years. Could be slightly expected.

10 days later, the day before I left for Greece, I picked my car up from the shop. I thanked the guy for the help, told him I hoped I didn’t see him for a long time. And I drove off. 15 minutes later, I arrived back at my house, went to back my car into my parking spot but couldn’t get it into gear. Then I tried to put it back into first, no go. Nothing. No gears. I call the shop back in tears, tell them my dilemma and they say they’ll come pick the car up on Monday, but they won’t today because they’re closed. I left for Greece and told them they could come pick up the car, but not to fix anything without consulting me. I knew if it was the gear box, and it was not something they had done when they fixed it the first time, I was going to be out about another €1000 which I knew, I didn’t have in my bank account.

A week later, sitting in a hotel room in Palaia Fokaia, I hadn’t heard from them when I got a text message from Bank of America saying my account was under my designated threshold. I had $22.90 in my account. They had charged me for my car, without asking me and I was out of money.

Justin to the rescue. My pimp daddy for the week, said he would be glad to help me out with whatever I needed and I could pay him back later. This, combined with the fact that I quit my normal job to go play with ponies in gypsy country (Andalucía) was the birth of the Gypsy. From that point, it was just a way to coin everything I did. Here is a dictionary of commonly used terms.

Gypsy jobs – begging for money, or performing *ahem* special acts for money
Gypsy omelettes – I worked off some of my debt cooking breakfast for the boat, Gypsy omelets have peppers, onions and Feta cheese usually accompanied by bacon and toast
Gypsy juice – Summer wine, Tinto de Verano or red wine with Sprite
Modified Gypsy juice – Rebojito, or white wine with Sprite
Gypsy whistle – either my Falling Whistle, or the sound it makes to round up all my little sailors
Gypsy headband – any headband I wore during the week which managed to meander it’s way down onto my forehead the drunker I got
Gypsy jams – for the 5 minutes when my iPod made it onto the deck and a bit of Flamenco music came on
Gypsy bed – my sleep sheet
Gypsy money – any coins.

The list goes on. But so you get any further references to the Gypsy, a little explanation was necessary.