The nickname wasn't from an overgrowth of hair on your head, or from your developing-but-no-doubt-potentially-formidable skills as a smuggler's cohort. The nickname came from the Chewbacca-like gurgle you adopted for one week, and one week only. The gleeful gurgle stemmed from your uvula, pushed out through your squeezed smile, and was almost always accompanied by your arms straightening out in front of you in some invisible bench press. The Chewbacca sound appeared at the exclusion of all other sounds. Your vowels were still there, your sentences, yes, and your barked orders, of course. But they were all shuffled into a new venture led by that playful punching bag at the back of your throat.
Then, just as you'd abandoned the previous week's guttural growl--from sheer mastery and perhaps not a little boredom--the Chewbacca gurgle likewise went away. Your dad imitated the sound, seeing if you'd continue to reciprocate. But eventually, since the nickname no longer fit, he gave up and fished backwards for some nickname predating "Chewy," which felt ironic since you'd progressed past being "Chewy."
Each day, your mom and dad search for your secret word of the day. Although sometimes it's a secret sound of the day, and not a word that can be readily conveyed, even with a skillfully-wrought tapestry of onomatopoeia. Regardless, the result of finding out your secret word of the day is: your giggles. Big huge giggles. Full belly laugh giggles, the kind that your mom and dad could record and listen to over and over throughout the entire day. The secret word of the day strikes you as hilarious, but only for fifteen to twenty minutes, whatever that word is. Then it's not funny to you anymore.
One day, the secret word was "Geeeh!" Another day, it was "beach ball!" (Or, more specifically, "Beach! Ball!" with an emphasis on the B's.) The latest secret word was coughing. You couldn't stop giggling when you'd hear your mom and dad hack and sputter up a lung-hiccuping cough. Real or faked, the comedy was brilliant.
But then, like every other secret word before it, it was done after a quarter of an hour. That was it. The "Geeeh!" wasn't funny anymore, the "Beach! Ball!" had lost its charm. And coughing became a cause for concern rather than a cause celebre. Just as your mom and dad don't appreciate recycling jokes, you only find your secret word funny for just so long, and then it's never that funny ever again.
