Dear Darling

Terms of endearment. Sweet nothings. The repeated words you hear in romance chic flicks about guys loving their girls. Honey. Baby. Darling. Angel. Those are the above mentioned terms of endearment. Topic of the day, are they necessary or do they make it all the more special. Now, I know the more common ones in Singapore are “Lao Po”, “Lao Gong” and “Dar”. One point or another, you might have used one yourself. Overseas, we have the more rather unique nicknames. Personal favourite of mine comes from a former reader in New Zealand. She preferred to be called “Shorty”. Now, “Shorty” is common elsewhere, other than the South East Asian region. It is used to refer to a girl who usually is very attractive.

Shorty. You won’t hear me using that at the moment, or within the next year or so. If you aren’t aware and have been living under a rock, the general female population in our region is vertically challenged with the average height being round about 1.6m. Guys are no different of course. But at least we’re just slightly short off the average height of a common Caucasian person by 5-10cm. Yes, they are not as “tall” as we usually put them out to be.

Most terms of endearment are usually short and easy to remember. Like sweetie, honey and/or darling. All of which are gender neutral. Forgiving ignorance, doesn’t it seem like we almost don’t care about personalisation when it comes to these terms? Would it kill to think of something more unique? As I see it, elsewhere, people are picking foodstuffs for nicknames. Such as “Sugar” or “Cupcake”. Why not “Curry Puff”? Can you really picture someone referring to his girl as “my dearest Lontong”?

Taking a list off the internet, we can see that there are many kinds unique names we would otherwise never hear. Such as “Poppit” or “Pookie”. Or other more creative ones. Such as “Snuggle Bunny”. Wait, isn’t that the rabbit that sings the song from Jamster? “You are my sweetest love. This love I always wanna hug”?

Aside from the obvious lack of unique food names to bestow upon our partners, the next time I decide to use “Shorty” to express my love for my significant other, I would expect her to take great offence to the term, seeing as how she’d be physically short, rip out my spine and beat me to death with it.