I have this thing. It's not a thing, really. You can't touch it or taste it. It's a pet peeve. And here it is.
I HATE the word baby...unless you're actually talking about a live little ball of giggles, then I love it.
I hate the word baby so much, that at one point in my life, I wouldn't eat foods with the word baby in the title. Baby pickles, baby corn, baby spinach. You'd be surprised how many foods there are. I was probably borderline OCD, but I'm over it now, and would devour a whole jar of baby pickles if you put one in front of me today.
Now, my hate of the word baby is relegated only to people using baby as a name for anyone over the age of two.*
When I get into a new relationship, I always feel like such a feminist when the guy tries to call me baby right off the bat and I have to announce, "I'm not your baby. Do you feed me? Do you clothe me? Do I depend on you for everything? No?? Okay, then don't call me baby."
I don't know when this started. Maybe it was when this song came out, or maybe it was when I got my first real boyfriend in high school, who finally settled on calling me Honey after I threw a non-baby like fit over the pet name "baby." Not very much more original, but at least it means sweet and not someone that depends on someone else for survival.
The next boyfriend was a little more original. He called me Favorite, which I LOVED, until I found out that he called the girls after me Favorite, too. Guess that was a time sensitive pet name.
After him, I dated a guy who just didn't call me anything, because he barely called me. We won't spend any more time talking about him on this blog.
Then, I met Dan. DP., Danimal, Dan the Man, AladDan, etc...
Right off the bat, I knew he was a keeper when he gave all of my friends nicknames without even trying. The way Dan comes up with nicknames for people is effortless! He just has a way with the pun and I think that might be one of the reasons we get along so well. We both love a bad (you know I mean good) pun.
After a few months of dating Dan, all of my friends had awesome yet endearing nicknames like, Karona (Karina), Melontron (Melanie), and I started to get jealous!
I'm the one he was driving 5 hours to see every weekend. Why didn't I have one?! I wanted my own something that meant Leah, but wasn't Leah, that Dan made up. So...I requested one. Lame, I know. That's almost as bad as making up your own nickname, which I did in 8th grade by the way...if you're nice and read this whole really long post, I'll reveal it at the end.
Anyway, while eating an egg roll, I mistakenly brought up my non-existent pet name and said, "Where's mine?" And without skipping a beat, he termed me EGG ROLL.
...
Not what I was expecting.
3 years and one co-habitation later, TarzDan has given me a few more nicknames/pet names, one of which has kept evolving. They are:
Leon (Why anyone would want to call their girlfriend by a boy's name is beyond me, but this one stuck for over a year. Even our friends started calling me Leon)
Pogs (This is actually an insult because the g in my last name is silent, but everyone pronounces it wrong and ends up saying POG-LEE-AN-O instead of the correct pronunciation, Po-lee-ah-no.) Insult or not, this one had even more staying power than Leon and turned into Pogsy, Pogsy doo, Pogsy doodle, and the newest El Pogso.
I have to say, that although the last one makes me sound like a Lucha Libre, it's still better than being called baby, a.k.a. someone who can't even wipe their own ass.
Are there things that you just CAN'T STAND? Even if they're insane (like mine), spill 'em so I don't feel like such a weirdo!
P.S. The nickname I gave myself in 8th grade was TADPOLE. And yes, I realize the irony of calling myself a baby frog, but at the time I was the smallest of my friends and we all gave ourselves "things that swim in the water" names. We were DORKS.
*My other exception to the baby rule is this: If you're an elderly black woman, especially one who's my grandma's age or older, you can call me baby all you want.
14 comments:
I enjoyed this. "Baby" annoys me too. I can't even think of anything else that bugs me at the moment. I have a whole long list of them though, believe me! I'm sure some of them are much more insane than just a bad nickname!
I've had a good handful... Beep (from my dad), Erunt (Air-Runt, from my aunt, she still calls me Runt), Lil Timmy/Tim from his freshman year (my brother's friends), Sparky (middle school "friends")....
I became a little sensitive about using pet names when my college boyfriend expressed a distaste for all pet names. Then one of the guys I was casually seeing here in Chicago started calling me babe (and other babe-plus things, like babesauce)... babe for some reason became endearing. ... But now with my boyfriend, I sometimes want to use a pet name like babe or sweetie... but I don't know how he feels about it.
Hey Tadpole, I mean Leah! LOL, that was hilarious. LOVE this post. Out of all nicknames/terms of endearments, "baby" is up there, but I actually hate "babe" more. You cannot say "babe" without sounding like a complete disingenuous ass. That said, I love giving people nicknames, not based on their names, just based on what will embarrass them. So my 3 best friends are: Honey Bunny, Sugar Bear, Love Bug. And they love it. Secretly. I think.
I love people's idiosyncracies! And I was always upset when I didn't have a nickname when I was younger.
Weirdly enough my pet peeves tend to deal with transportation. It drives me bonko when people don't make room for others on the bus, and I hate when cars leave a full cars length at a stop light. I don't even drive! Haha.
I dislike 'baby' as a term of endearment, too. It's not for any feminist reason, but because it smacks of pedophilia. Really? I'm your 'baby' and you make out with me? You should probably stay away from small children.
Having said that, I used to call one of my ex-girlfriends 'kid.' I think that's a little more hypocritical than 'tadpole.'
My last name, Garwood, has been the source of most of my nicknames, most notably: Z-Gar, Gar, Woody, Cigarwood, Scarwood, Scar-Gar, and eventually just Scar. Most of these were given to me by one of my college freshman-year roommates. He was so persistent in calling me Scar, that by my Junior year, I knew some people that would have been hard-pressed to say what my actual name was.
I used to be the exact same way. My line always used to be, 'No one can call me Baby except Patrick Swaze and even then I must be in a corner.'
But lately, I started using it as a joke with my BF just to annoy him. I think it stuck and I'm working hard to get unstuck.
I love nicknames. They are essential to life. My brother has been called Biff for the last 13 years and only this year did he watch Back to the Future for the first time and realize why we were calling him that. My wife is either Los or Goat, sometimes Los Goat. She calls me either Los or Pig. Sometimes Los Oink. Friends called me Paps for the most part.
Well it was better than Pampers from Junior High.
My biggest pet peeves though are when people (in public or at a social gathering) talk in baby voices to their significant other. Talk like a fucking adult. You are not a baby. Nor is your SO. I also hate anything that ends with "-kins" like Schmookiekins. Blearagh
Ugh! Baby is definitely one of those nicknames that I hated. And like some other people mentioned, BABE! Ugh, that's just horrible.
My dad used to have so many nicknames for me: Honey Bun, Doogabock, Doogie, Peaches n Cream (I hated this one), Furby (which caused my to shave off all the hair on my arms. True story.), etc.
I don't have many now...just Steph or Stephany. Not many people call me Steph, though.
I like pet names but "baby" really irritates me too. It makes me feel like a child and not in a good way.
also hate being called 'baby' or 'babe'. really, really annoys the snot out of me. luckily my bf is really good at the pet name thing and he comes up with some really cute ones...ones that make me want to throw up a little, because they're so cutesy, but really, i'm secretly pleased that he calls me these things.
my favourite, favourite one? "cookiepants" - i have no idea why i like it so much, i just do :)
Todd and I are 100% guilty of the Baby/Babe situation. I consciously tried to steer clear of it when we first started dating since all of my previous boyfriends had defaulted to "Baby", but it's such an easy word to throw around. I actually don't consider it a nickname for either one of us though. It's more like a "Hey you!" It's also slowly been morphing into other words like Bebe and Bubba. (I like Bubba for Todd. I'm thinking about keeping that one.)
Todd's real "term of endearment" for me is Shug (short for Sugar - which sounds sweet until I clarify that he was forced to shorten it because I refused to answer to SugarTits. He's so dreamy...) But Shug is cute. I can handle Shug.
P.S. I'm loving Pogs, but Leon was the best.
Hmmm, I'm not very creative when it comes to nicknames. Usually I just use "dear" or "sweetie." Pretty straightforward. I call my current lady "cuteface," but I don't know if she likes that.
HAHA. I love that you refused to eat "baby foods." That's amazing.
I would list my boyfriend's pet names for me, but then he'd shank me. They're ridiculous.
Blah! I hate the pet name "Baby", too. I also hate it when people I don't know call me hun or sweetie--like waitresses or people at the bank. Drives me crazy.
I always hated that my name can't have that cute "ie" sound added to it-- Stephie, Meggie, Jackie, etc. Erica-y? Nope. Doesn't work.
The boyfriend calls me Darling, and I swoon every single time. My name doesn't rhyme with much except for America, and that's just lame. So I haven't really had that many nicknames. Sigh.
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