Coquettish endearments should be used sparingly
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News
MY husband has a new habit. He thinks it’s endearing; I think it’s annoying. No surprise there.
As far as I’m concerned, this latest tic contributes to Stanley’s emerging persona as a geezer. It is especially objectionable because it undercuts my own desperate effort to cling to youth.
How am I supposed to get away with calling colleagues “dawg” when I’m linked to a person who pairs tube socks with sandals, sports a sweaty fedora, and grunts whenever he hoists himself out of a chair? If I’d wanted to marry Jed Clampett, I’d have gone for somebody with oil money.
And now, to compound the impression that he’s just spry enough to hitchhike to the mortuary, Stanley insists on calling comely young women “darling.”
Not just his own daughter, mind you — some of her friends, too. Even the popcorn girl at the movie theatre had to endure this affectation the other night, right after Stanley’s facetious compliments on her up-selling skills and how they’ll contribute to Cineplex’s bottom line. Ah, the thrill she must have had from being teased by a grizzled feller who had to put on bi-focals to count his change.
Have I mentioned that Stanley is 47?
He’s too old to be considered charmingly flirtatious and too young to masquerade as senile. In other words, he has no excuse. What next — walking around parking lots in his gonch, offering ladies car washes from a “sexy senior citizen”?
Anyway, as I pointed out to him at the movie theatre, it is patronizing to a working woman of any age to be called “darling.” Even a hooker, accustomed as she is to undesirable behaviours, would turn up her nose at this term of endearment. She is not a customer’s darling; nor would she wish to be. While some women might put up with being “darling-ed” by a famously doddering actor — Peter O’Toole, say, begging for a decent cup of tea — their patience would only be due to his celebrity. Being darling-ed by an Everyman is just plain wrong.
In fact, I remember complaining about a codger who used to drive a bus daily for Calgary Herald employees when we were making the transition between an old and a new building years ago. He would call all female passengers “dear” and “sweetie,” most likely because he couldn’t remember our names. He meant well, but I don’t think he would have appreciated it if I had called him “Gramps.” Nor would Stanley delight in being addressed as “Old Timer” by some nubile sprite.
People don’t like to be reminded of their age or status by someone they don’t know. To “darling” or “dear” a stranger is to force unwanted intimacy on her, which suggests the “darling-er’s” superiority. Worse, it makes even an innocent guy seem like an old Lothario.
Stanley is not a Lothario, except perhaps in his dreams. (I sometimes see him twitching his lips in his sleep.) There are plenty of creaky philanderers around, though. With the exception of Mick Jagger, they look more pathetic by the day.
Hugh Hefner, for instance, may inspire admiration in those with adolescent tastes. But how many 79-year-olds would honestly like to be seen shuffling around the discos in pajamas every night, with a string of seven dizzy, silicone-enhanced bottle blondes?
I see you, mature gentleman reader, with a faraway look in your eye and a pool of drool on your shirt. You think you’d be up to Hef’s tasks for a few nights, correct? After that, I’m betting you’d wish you were fishing, doing your daily crossword puzzle or building that dollhouse for your granddaughter. You’d quickly discover that Hef’s blondes won’t talk about the weather or politics, hate playing golf and can’t cook a roast chicken worth a hoot.
Anyway, wrinkled rakes are three for a dollar. Just the other day the Vancouver Sun’s entertainment section ran a story under the unwittingly hilarious headline “Simpson receives warm welcome from Burt Reynolds.” Naturally, the Sun was not referring to Bart or Homer Simpson, but to Jessica Simpson, whom the accompanying photo depicted in the abbreviated Dukes of Hazzard shorts that her fans so dearly love.
The headline was funny on so many levels: a) Who cares? b) Who cares? c) Who cares? and d) Why wouldn’t Burt Reynolds receive Jessica Simpson warmly? Who is Burt Reynolds — late of Loni Anderson and other ill-fated liaisons — to be standoffish to a gorgeous young performer of questionable talents and notoriously iffy brainpower?
The newsworthy headline would be “Simpson receives cold shoulder from Burt Reynolds.”
The story might read “Burt Reynolds still hasn’t recovered from the shocking news he received about Jessica Simpson just before meeting her on the Dukes of Hazzard film set. “That girl used to think ‘chicken of the sea’ was actually chicken,” said the former star of The Longest Yard, shaking his head in disgust. “I could offer her no more than a curt handshake.”
For a celebration of Don Juanism and its various predictable outcomes, we can look to three movies this summer: Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Broken Flowers. Wedding Crashers features two divorce mediators just past their prime who still cling to their playboy ways. After bedding numerous women on false pretenses, preying on their wedding-related vulnerability, the pranksters start to weary of the routine.
Meanwhile, in The 40 Year Old Virgin, a sweetly chaste clerk (Steve Carell) in an electronics store is advised on seduction by a trio of lunatic co-workers who consider themselves to be men’s men.
And in Broken Flowers, Bill Murray’s glum, never-married, grey-haired Casanova, Don Johnston, might be any of the unsavoury characters in the afore-mentioned films, 25 years down the road.
Totally unfairly, I hold Don Johnston up as an example to Stanley, married 23 years as of today. “Beware, middle-aged man,” I say. “Put away your ‘darlings’ before you get hurt.”
Keep your charm in your holster, in other words, until you really need it.
Writing > Humour
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