Sometimes, as I'm sure you well know, it's not what you say but how you say it. We've all had the experience of someone responding to something we've said by saying, 'Funny,' when you know she doesn't think you're in the least bit funny. That, in common parlance, is known as sarcasm. It can work the other way, too: when something that doesn't sound especially good turns out to be quite nice.
Still, I have to tell you I was less than charmed when Kathy first called me Stinky. No, what I was feeling was probably more along the lines of horror than delight. But she assured me there was only affection in this nickname. And though I remained skeptical about just how being referred to as, essentially, an offensive odor might signify endearment, I have to admit that one can run the risk of contracting diabetes when covered with nothing but 'sweeties,' 'honeys,' 'sugars,' and the like, no matter how sincerely endowed. For all its faults, the nickname 'Stinky' certainly does an end run around being too saccharin.
Actually, over time, I became a little too comfortable with this nickname, which we began to share with one another fairly equally: once, when we were out shopping somewhere, I called out to Kathy, without even realizing it, something along the lines of, 'Hey, Stinky—come take a look at this.' Kathy quietly but firmly requested that I reserve that particular term of endearment for the privacy of our home. While she didn't mind if I happened to call her 'dear' or 'baby' out in public or in front of, say, her parents, she wasn't confident that anyone overhearing me call her 'Stinky' would translate it properly as love talk. Over the years, 'Stinky' has been joined by various other loving epithets too embarrassing to mention ( which, you are probably thinking, must really be bad considering I'm willing to tell you about 'Stinky' ) , but they have always remained something only we shared. In short, though, I have embraced the spirit of this pattern of nicknames and christened Kathy with a few of my own. Not all of them are antisyrupy—some of them tend toward the just plain weird, perhaps prime among the latter being 'my little Ming vase' ( pronounced 'vahz' ) , which is meant to connote something rare and precious. Good intentions aside, being compared to a piece of ancient Chinese pottery is not necessarily what one would call typical, as intimacies go. But then, I'm willing to concede there are a number of ways in which Kathy and I are not entirely typical.
Then, a few months back, a friend of mine happened to mention that she had begun calling her new beau 'Stinky,' apropos of nothing. I had already suspected that she and I were kindred spirits, but knowing that 'stinky' did not, for her, denote something odiferous made it clear that there was a reason we had bonded so quickly. And now, more recently, having reached a new level of intimacy with her guy, she has shortened that nickname even further, to 'Stinks.' Ah, love among the skunkily inclined!
Of course—and I speak now only for myself and not my friend—part of what calling each other 'stinky' does, besides keeping each of us in our place and not letting us get too big headed, is make it even more special when one of the more conventional sweet nothings is whispered during a tender moment. Think about it: if you had a Krispy Kreme doughnut for every meal of every day, it would probably be a little less special now, wouldn't it? But how special is anything when your cholesterol shoots up a hundred points in a week?
Anyway, what put me in mind of all of this love talk of late—besides having just breezed past our 17-year anniversary ( you'd be surprised how many words of love [ and something closer to their opposite! ] you go through in 17 years ) —was that I had asked Kathy whether my red clogs looked OK with the clothes I was wearing.
Without skipping a beat, she replied, 'You look like a demented elf.' I knew she meant it with love. ...
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