Herbie the Hornet
There’s a bit of a historical progression regarding my old high school’s mascot which amuses me quite a lot, and very few people know about it.
When I went there, the mascot was just the Highland High Hornet, our sports teams all being “The Hornets.” But nowadays it has a de-facto name of Herbie. And this has a very direct connection to me.
I don’t know when the mascot started being called Herbie, but he’s probably called that because the campus snack bar/convenience store is named “Herbie’s.” This convenience store was built in the early 90s, and was named in either 1993 or 1994 after being put to a vote by the student body, which overwhelmingly decided to call it “Herbie’s.”
Why “Herbie’s?” Because there was, at the time, a trend for everyone to call each other “Herbie” as a friendly nickname.
Why this? Well, it’s because “Yo, Herbie!” was a suddenly popular generic greeting that people shouted at each other.
Why were people doing that? Well, it’s because that was my (undesired) nickname for a while, and people would shout “Yo, Herbie!” at me in the hallway — which I’d ignore.
And why was it my nickname? Well, in my Junior year English class (1993-1994), our assigned reading was The Milagro Beanfield War, a novel about a fictional small town in New Mexico.
And in this novel was a character named Herbie Goldfarb1, an extremely socially-awkward Jewish nerd who comes to town.
I was an extremely socially-awkward Jewish nerd, and so everyone in class started calling me “Herbie” as a joke, which I did not particularly care for.
And then this joke escaped containment, and one thing led to another and now my high school mascot is (sort of) indirectly named after me.
It’s kind of funny what sort of unexpected impact one can have on their surroundings.
I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from my high school, but I wonder if they’d also be amused by this.