That’s how he came to be known early on, from his first name and middle initial, short for Daniel Dirth Haughton. Dan D. makes Dandy. On the first order one might consider Dandy as complimentary, but the others orders of defining this nickname were what bugged the man. Dandy, explaining the vane sort of elegant man. Dandy, short for dandelion, so a kind of feminine calling. Some expanded on the last, calling on him as D.D., pronounced Dee Dee, another female insinuation.

Dandy was in no way elegant, or feminine, and he cursed his folks for setting him up this way. (otherwise he was real fond of them) As imagined, his name got him in to plenty of scraps. For a skinny little one, he achieved great talent in the area, besting boys twice his size, and acquiring an egg of stone from it being beat on so regular.

At fifteen, somebody smacked the side of his head with a tire iron, and as if nothing happened, Dandy commenced to beat that boy to near death. The kids looking on were dumfounded. Afterward, Dandy said nothing, applied pressure to the gusher, and him and his friend took their twenty inch knobby tired bikes down the road. His bud stitched him up later and his folks never knew.

The fights slowed as he got older, whittling down to one per month or so in his bar-hopping days. None of those altercations had a thing to do with his name, and usually involved putting some sloshy drunk to sleep who had insisted on it.

Yeah, those days Dan focused on the girls, of course. And he wasn’t picky, as he had a look in the mirror a time or two. He joked, even to his wife when time came, that a three hundred pounder was the best fun he ever had. Aggie Haughton would care less. She was perfect for him.

Dandy worked regular jobs his whole life, which is probably why he had some spare brain to store all that sports data and movie trivia he knew. Not much ambition, content with a roof and a meal and the like, but stood out to the bosses as reliable and hard at work.

His lacking knowledge of mechanics was legend. If it didn’t involve duct tape or a hammer, he’d hand it off to Aggie. Good thing, too, as once he tried his hand at a gas leak with the above-mentioned hardware, and if it weren’t for Aggie, they’d both been dead.

No matter, they’re both dead now. They were cool, though. The end.

~tdv