The People We Know From Stories

The other day I was watching a TV show, and a character got Bunzied. You’ll be forgiven for not knowing what that term means because technically I just invented it while watching the show. There are at least a handful of people who will understand the origin of the word. For the record when used as a verb the term Bunzy means to get left behind at a gas station.

My newly coined verb comes from the name, well presumably nickname, of a woman I have never met. In fact, I know pretty much nothing at all about this woman except that 1) she had a kickass nickname and 2) she once got accidentally left behind at a gas station. The reason I know this is because it was a story Ron’s grandmother used to like to tell about some of her friends.

The story went like this, Bunzy and her husband (whose name I no longer remember because it wasn’t anywhere near as memorable as Bunzy) were on the road and stopped to get gas. While Bunzy’s husband was filling the car with gas, Bunzy went in to use the ladies room or grab a snack or something. When he was done pumping gas, Bunzy’s husband got back in the car, started it up and drove off. He made it a couple of miles down the road when he realized something was missing. The punch line of Ron’s grandmother’s story was, “Oh! I forgot Bunzy!” As stories go, it wasn’t much, but sometimes it’s all in the telling. Ron’s grandmother was always very animated as she delivered the punchline, and I think it helped that her friend’s nickname was so wonderfully ridiculous. “Oh! I forgot Mary!” just doesn’t have the same laughter-inducing quality.

Ron’s grandmother passed away several years ago, and I can only assume her friend Bunzy is long gone as well, but thanks to that story she used to love to tell, I thought of both of them while watching a sitcom character get accidentally left behind at a gas station, and I think that’s pretty cool.

Ten years ago, Ron and I went on a trip to Pittsburgh. While there we visited the National Aviary, and spent some time watching the penguins. (That’s a photo of one of them above.) I remember they had some signage that identified all the resident penguins by name. As I recall most had very ordinary people names like Kevin and Shirley and such. It was a fun feature that we were still talking about hours later as we tried to come up with the perfect penguin name. We brainstormed a few good ones, but it was Ron who some time later burst out of a hotel bathroom triumphantly declaring he knew the perfect penguin name. It was, of course, Bunzy.

As a result, that Christmas I “adopted” a penguin for Ron at a South American research station which sent regular updates about our penguin Bunzy and so along with the “adoption paperwork” I made a little paint-by-number penguin painting, which remains, to this day, on display in our living room.

So, even now Bunzy’s memory lives on thanks to the story her friend used to tell, thanks to the story I’m sharing with you today.

—Alissa