The Grandest of All the Canyons

It all started an innocent Friday afternoon. Some of my co-workers were about to leave for the pub, and one of them came over to my (now former) boss, "Hey Horse, are you ready to go?" I was still pretty new to the team, so I was in my getting-to-know-everyone phase. The next time I was alone with him, I asked, "So why did Nathan call you 'Horse'?" To which he responded, "Oh, it's just something we do back home, like how you call each other 'mate' in Australia. 'Hey Horse', 'Hey Horsebox, what's the craic?'" (Note: My former boss is Irish, and I think Nathan is Australian, but he worked in London long enough to pick up a bit of an accent.)

Seeing as I didn't know all that much about Irish culture, I just accepted his response. But it turned into a nickname. I'd call him Horse, and he'd call me Horsebox.

Well, I thought that Grad Daniel should be introduced into the equine family, so I decided to look up the term Horsebox (since horse would give too many conflicting results) to see if there were any other similar Irish slang terms I could appropriate for Grad Daniel. The top result was the Urban Dictionary definition for "horsebox", so I decided I should actually check if he wasn't just yanking my chain, because he told me some pretty stupid stuff about leprechauns before.

I look at the first result:

OK, so he wasn't just making stuff up.

But then I scroll down to the only other result:

Well, damn. Thankfully, I don't think he's ever gotten in trouble for calling me Horsebox at work, but I think I might stop calling him Horse so he'll stop as well, just in case. I know some people might get worked up over this with the whole women in tech thing.

On the other hand, I guess That Guy was right after all - I am the grand canyon!

(Also, he is my former boss because he got promoted, not because of anything bad!)