Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Pet Names and Nicknames

by Linda Robertson, your hump-day word whore...

I am currently sans significant other. In the past, I have referred to my fella as, obviously, my “fella” or as “the mister.” Both throw people. They’re not “husband,” not “boyfriend.” It’s sneakily uninformative. It denotes ‘taken’ without specifying to what degree. It makes people look for rings, but the exchange of rings may be personal and not bound with legalities. That said, the more endearing terminology I use tends to be rather uncreative. I default with “hun” or “honey” but I actually tend to refrain from using even that in front of others—especially his guy pals—unless I’m sure that he’s cool with it.

I’ve had a few names that were specifically pet names used for me. If they were endearing and sweet, not sappy, I was okay with whatever a fella wanted to call me. I mean it’s coming out of his mouth, so if he’s not emasculated to call me something sweet, it’s all good.

To take this little blog off on a tangent (in the interest of being more than two paragraphs) let me tell you about my son. Shortly after he came home from the hospital, the Eldest was holding his newest younger brother and remarked that he was a cute little pooh-ba-ly-pooh.

It stuck.

He was Pooh ever after.

He’s been Pooh Bear, Pooh Belly, The Pooh Meister, Pooh-tacious, Pooh-tastic, and Pooh Man Chu. You get the idea. Now, fast forward to the kid being a sixth grader and his classmates finding out that his mom calls him Pooh Bear. Yes, we had an inconveniently timed visit to a local store in which I was not thinking about his school-cred.

Sounds like a disaster in the making.

But.

Somehow…somehow… this kid managed to turn it to his advantage. By the end of the day, his pals were arguing over which of them got to be Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore.

Now...a video about sweet pet names. :-) Enjoy!


1 comment:

  1. That's a great story! Points out that it's always in our power to decide how to handle things, and turn it to our advantage.

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