As you can tell from reading my bio on this site my name is not Cat Sanderson, it’s Cass Anderson. So how did the inner sanctum of my life come to calling me ‘Cat Sanderson’ throughout the years? It’s a long story, one that involves drug dogs, underage drinking, camp counselors, and illiteracy throughout The South.
I was thinking about all of this the other day, and I started wondering where all the nicknames of my colleagues came from, and all my college friends, friends from home, etc. It got me thinking that we here at BroBible should roll out a new feature ‘The Etymology of a Bro’s Nickname: How A Bro’s Nickname Came Into Being’. So today I’m going to tell you the story of how some people in my life started calling me ‘Cat Sanderson’, or just ‘Sanderson’ for short. Now, if you’ve got a good nickname then after you read this story I want you to hit up that tip line over to the right on our site, drop me a comment in this post down below, or shoot me an email with the tale of how you got your nickname and you can be featured here on BroBible.
It was the Summer between high school and college, my best friend had convinced me to go up to Asheville, North Carolina (from Florida) to be a camp counselor with him at the camp he’d gone to his entire life. I’m going to leave the name of the camp out because it’s a pretty heavily Christian camp and I don’t want them bothered by having their name associated with this story, also, nobody who works at that camp ever got wind of this.
So we drive on up to Asheville, I’d never been to the camp and didn’t have to go through the normal counselor application process because my best friend and his 3 brothers had gone to the camp for years, and apparently that was enough for the camp’s director to accept me. We get there, I meet with the director to fill out my paperwork, and almost immediately he dives into trying to impress upon me the seriousness of my camp counselor position (it was support staff, easy as hell). At one point I think he said something along the lines of ‘I don’t know you, so I have no reason to trust you. I trust your friend, he vouched for you, but there’s going to be no messing around here’. I’m still not sure what he expected from me, maybe getting hammered at night or smoking weed down by the parking lot? It’s unclear, but he certainly rattled me.
So that’s Day 1. Night 1 we have nothing to do until the campers arrive the next day so we go into downtown Asheville to eat dinner at Carrabba’s. As it just so happened we has two friends from Florida who were also in town, one was a camp counselor at the same camp as us (an all boys camp), the other was a female friend of ours from H.S. who went to that camp where they filmed all those scenes from Judd Apatow’s Heavyweights (1995) with Ben Stiller.
This girl meets us for dinner and she shows up absolutely hammered. Like, she’s fucking discombobulated and it’s not even 7pm. Apparently she’d actually beaten us to the restaurant and had some beers (12 pack, I forget how many she drank) with her and crushed them in the parking lot while waiting for us. So after dinner it comes time for her to driver back to her camp and I’m all ‘oh hell nah, this is not happening.’ I step up, I take the PROPER INITIATIVE and say that since I’m sober I’ll drive her back to her camp and the bros I’m with can follow me in my car and we’ll just get back to our camp a little late.
Here’s where ALL FUCKING HELL BREAKS LOOSE. She drives a Toyota Forerunner, her windows were not tinted, she had a busted tail light, and she’d thrown all the empty beers she drank into the trunk of her car.
We’re not 4 blocks away from Carrabba’s when I make a turn and cop lights go off in my rear view mirror. The officer walks up to the car with his flashlight shining, looking through the windows. At this point I had NO FUCKING CLUE there were empty beer cans in the car, but the cop did. He gets to the driver’s window and shines his light in my eyes, first thing he says “get your ass out of the car”. Immediately tosses me in handcuffs without asking a single question.
Now I don’t know the roads of Asheville, North Carolina too well, so I don’t really recall where we were. I’m assuming though that we were very close to a police station, because within 10 minutes of getting pulled over by the first cop there were SEVEN COP CARS, 11 POLICE OFFICERS, AND TWO DRUG DOGS. It was like cops were driving around, would see a mob of flashing lights, and would then pull over to investigate. The entire situation snowballed out of control.
So the cop throws me in the back of his police cruiser as I’m trying to tell him ‘Sir, I’m a designated driver. I’ve done nothing wrong at all, I’m being responsible here, you’ve really misjudged this situation’.
After a handful of the other cops have arrived one of them pulls me out of the back of the cop cruiser and grabs my wallet out of my back pocket, this is the first time that anyone’s even asked me who I am. My name is Cass Anderson, this is what it says on my driver’s license, this is what it says when police look up my name in a database. Instead, the cop whips out my license, is looking at it, and in the thickest southern drawl I’ve ever heard he asks me: “What’s your name, boy? Cat? Cat Sanderson?”
I was trying to keep my composure throughout the entire debacle but it was at this point that I just started laughing in the cop’s face, and responded: “No, it’s Cass Anderson. You’re holding my driver’s license. That’s what it says on that little piece of plastic you’re holding in your hand.” Somehow the cop didn’t hit me with his maglite for insolence, and somehow my drunk friend who was in the car had heard the entire exchange go down. From there on out ‘Cat Sanderson’ stuck.
Now I’m tossing it to you bros: HOW DID YOU GET YOUR NICKNAME? If you think it’s a great story I want you to shoot me an email to ‘cass @ brobible.com’ and we can see about featuring you here on BroBible. You can also hit me up in the comments down below, OR you can use the ‘GOT SOME NEWS?’ tip line right here!
P.s., if you’re wondering how the night ended the girl got charged with underage drinking and possession of alcohol, they eventually realized I was being a responsible friend and driving sober, and they released her into my custody to drive her back to camp.