How Shannon Became GoGo

"Wake me up before you go-go/ Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo." - "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!

As I promised last week, here is my story about how I became a nanny. Let's start a few years before that. Right after high school I enrolled at a local university with plans to get my Masters in education within five years and become an elementary school teacher. When classes started, I began working part-time at the university's child development center and absolutely loved my job working with toddlers. I loved it so much that I shifted my focus to preschool education and transfered to a community college the next fall, because it was so much cheaper and I could take only the classes that actually pertained to my degree and not a boatload of gen-ed courses that would bore me to death. I went to school off and on for the next few years and graduated in December of 2004 with my certificate in Early Childhood Instruction. So basically, I completed my education backwards.

During my final semester of college, I did an internship at a wonderful preschool in Virginia Beach and ended up getting hired at their newest location just a few miles from my house. I loved the children, loved teaching, and loved planning my lessons, but the nonstop work (over 50 hours a week at the school and 15-20 hours a week working on classroom things at home), the marketing of my classroom that took my focus away from my students, and the politics involved in all of it, caused me to leave the school after one year.

Right after I quit, my sister's boss (she was a nanny at the time too) was at the doctor and learned that her doctor was pulling her little girl out of preschool and looking for a nanny. The child's teacher who she had really taken to had just left the school and they were expecting another baby, so they really wanted someone to teach and care for the children at home. My sister's boss told her doctor that her nanny's sister might be interested, and it turned out that I had been her daughter's teacher at the school! I interviewed with them later that week, and the rest is history. It is now five-and-a-half years later and I am happy to say that even though I finished my education backwards and some would say went backwards in my career as well, I am pleased with how everything turned out. That just goes to show that no one's future turns out exactly how they think it will when they are high school dreamers.

Now, the GoGo part. When the oldest child I teach was around two years old, she still wasn't talking much, and would just point at me instead of saying my name. Sometimes she would point at the garage door as well, the door I entered and exited every day. She probably thought I lived in her garage! Anyway, around the time her baby sister was born, she started talking a little more, and for some reason, started calling me GoGo. It sounds nothing like Shannon, which she adamantly refused to say for years, but it quickly stuck and has now morphed into all kinds of nicknames including Goges, GeeGee, Geegs, and the always embarrassing Gogolicious, which is especially mortifying when said in public. When I asked one day a few years ago why she calls me GoGo, this little girl looked up at me and said that it's a fun name for a fun person. Very sweet, but I want to know why it started! In the future (when I'm a rich and famous author who will probably have to write a book about everything I have been through working with these crazy, lovable, wonderful children), people will ponder these great mysteries in life: How was Stonehenge built? What really causes crop circles? Are Elvis and Jim Morrison both living in Seattle drinking Frappaccinos and laughing at everyone who thinks they are dead (okay, I think I'm losing it a little!)? And why in the world was Shannon called GoGo by those two kooky kids? The explanations could be very interesting!