Young love is so sweet. Amber and I are still coming up with cute
little names for one another, always trying to out-do our previous
efforts to flatter one another. We've got the normal combinations like
"snuggle bear" and "baby cakes" down. And we've been venturing out into
the kind-of-silly-but-still-sweet combos like "sweetie-heart" and
"cuteheart."
But every once in a while, when I try to think on the fly, things go
awry.
Yesterday, I attempted to combine words from my available (but
apparenly very limited) vocabulary and come up with a new, endearing
term to call my cute wife. Here's what I came up with: "Sweetie ball."
Yes. I called my wife "sweetie ball." And not in the "You're a sweetie!
Ballroom dancing sounds great!" kind of way. Just, "Hey sweetie ball."
During the
first two syllables, I was actually feeling pretty confident. "Sweetie"
came out very nicely, Amber was all smiles, and everything seemed good. But
as soon as that "b" sound started rolling off my tongue, I knew it
wasn't going to be good. I
tried to stop myself, but I had already passed the point of no return. I could not recover the "ball." My only
concession was that I think I was actually going to say "sweetie
balls," so I at least avoided the plural
After it came out, rather than admitting my blunder, I did what every self-respecting
male who has just done something incredibly silly would do: I just
tried to act like it was normal. "Hey there, 'sweetie
ball,' how are you?" But Amber, ever observant, noticed right away that
she had been called "sweetie ball." She looked at me, half shocked, half about-to-laugh-her-head-off, and asked, "Did
you just call me ... 'sweetie ball'?" All I could say was, "Yes ... but
really I tried to
stop."
So, my first piece of dating/marriage advice is make sure to think
before you speak. If you just starting talking, you never know what
will come out.
(No worries though. Amber is really nice and didn't give me a hard time about it. That's why she'll always be my sweetie ball.)