I chose gizmo because the word has a lot of memories for me from my childhood. When I was around eight years old I was the mascot twirler for my sisters' high school marching band. During that year, they were playing a piece called Gremlin. Since my mother can really sew (she sewed the entire band's uniforms one year) it was decided that it would be great to have a gizmo running around on the field being chased by a bunch of gremlins during that song. It was quite entertaining, believe me.
However, the gizmo doesn't stop there. After having used it for that and for Halloween as well, my family decided that we didn't just want to toss the costume. Afterall, Mom had won the golden thimble award for making it. Well, I also was playing softball at the time and all of the teams (or almost all) in our club were called the Chiefs. So we decided to become the Gizmo Chiefs. Mom made us a banner and we even came up with a way to keep the costume around. We stuffed it with cotton and let a different member of the team take it home each week.
Finally, when I became a member of ASK, I had to come up with a question for my sisters to answer. So one of those questions was related to the stories above. It is amusing sometimes though if new members don't know the story, they will think that I like to mess around with various mechanical objects (chemical engineering). So the story has to be told again and again. I keep it around because it is quite unique, especially in my chapter, and also is a great ice breaker from an alum stand point when talking to new candidates and actives.
OUgizmoASK