Nikki
10 Characterizing and Dramatic Micro Stories About Nikki the Unexpected Podcaster
- My older brother was the one who originally suggested that my parents name me Nikki. My mom fell in love with the idea because she hated the previously suggested Nicole option. Despite being the one who named me, the first thing my brother ever called me was Nickelodeon, and to this day everyone just assumes my name is Nicole so I’ve started answering to literally any variation of Nick.
- The first time an adult ever posed the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my preschool aged-self answered with confidence: “I want to be the president of the world!” As I got older, my parents made sure to tell me they were temporarily concerned they were raising a tiny, red-headed dictator.
- I learned to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time when I was 7 years old. One week after I became confident enough to ride by myself, I pedaled too fast and face planted straight into a tree by the playground. I haven’t ridden a bike since.
- The closest I’ve ever been to being in a fist fight was when I was 9 years old and I pushed a neighborhood friend through the window of the wooden playhouse in my backyard. Her face was scraped badly, and I begged my mom to drive me to school for the next week because I was too much of a pansy to get on the bus and face her again, even though she was tormenting me and kind of a bully and definitely deserved it.
- My journey to becoming a creative writing major started when I fell in love with writing in the fourth grade. My first ever “novel” was written about two years later. Since I had no idea fan fiction was a thing, my Twilight inspired story turned into really bad YA novel because I was 12 and too ashamed to admit the true depth of my love for vampire romance.
- I’ve seen singer/songwriter Jacob Whitesides in concert six times since I was sixteen and paid to meet him twice. I also maybe genuinely cite Justin Bieber as the first love of my life.
- I started working in a food truck that specializes in French fries when I was sixteen. Of all the skills I’ve acquired there, I’d say learning how to develop a quality working relationship with hordes of yellowjackets and how to side step creepy advances by creepier old men are among the best.
- At orientation for the worst job I’ve had thus far, the HR representative training four of us to be cashiers made a point to tell us about the man who had been shot and killed in front of our store a year prior after trying to rob our jewelry counter. My first lesson that day was to always open my cash drawer and step away if I was ever robbed at gun or knife point. For the next 10 months, I worked the customer service desk at a dying retail store where despite my job description, I’m fairly certain I was being paid $7.75 an hour to be yelled at by customers and worry that I was going to get stabbed over the ridiculousness of our return policies.
- My biggest accomplishment and greatest embarrassment in life so far is that a video exists on Youtube of Jacob Whitesides giving a dramatic reading of a fanfiction I wrote about him when I was 16. I’m fairly certain that every cringy online view of this video cuts another minute off my life. As of today, my life is over 1700 minutes shorter.
- I signed up for the class, writing and editing podcasts, under the impression that I would learn how to write and edit a podcast. I never expected to actually record my own voice and put it out on the internet, but here we are.
Music: Follow Your Dreams by Scott Holmes