Don't call me baby

At 6am yesterday I was fast asleep and dreaming, which is pretty much what I imagine most people would have been doing at that time.  Unfortunately I was wrenched from my cosy cocoon of slumber by an inexplicable ringing.  I was so confused that as I picked up the offending object (which of course was my phone), I wasn't sure what to do with it.  I answered the call and, like an extraterrestrial unfamiliar with human technology, I dumbly said nothing for a second or two before realising that I was supposed to utter some kind of greeting. 

Look, I'm not at my sharpest upon first waking.  I'm sure I'm a good 20 to 30 IQ points dumber until after breakfast and at six in the morning I'm pretty much down to my instinct-driven "lizard brain", my medulla oblongata (one of my favourite words) which does not allow for higher-level reasoning, communication, fine motor skills or Yahtzee.

So, as I said, eventually I got around to answering the phone with an eloquent "hello", which was echoed by a male voice which then put the conversational ball back in my court...so I went with "hello" again as this was the only word I could think of and I was certainly not capable of something as complex as "and what can I do for you?"

"Can I speak to Jonathan?" said the dream assassin, who I was now realising had an American accent.

Somehow my lizard brain managed to remember that I don't know anyone named Jonathan and dredged up an appropriate phrase from somewhere in the reservoir of my mind.

"No, you've got the wrong number," is what I went with. Blunt, short but perfectly easy to understand.

"Jonathan...Tyree" he repeated, as if including the last name might jog my memory enough that I would remember that I LIVE with a guy named Jonathan, we're married actually and we have three children. How stupid of me to have forgotten!  But I suppose if you're in the habit of calling people at that hour of the morning then you're used to dealing with the "lizard brain effect" wherein such lapses of memory can perhaps occur.

"No, you've got the wrong number," I in turn repeated, and I fancy it was with a tone of voice that said "if punching you in the face was an iPhone app, I'd totally be doing that right now".

Finally satisfied that the mysterious Jonathan was not to be found at my house in the pre-dawn darkness, my new friend signed off with "OK, sorry about that, sweetie."

Sweetie? Sweetie? Who was this impertinent American waking me up at sparrow fart on a Sunday and calling me "sweetie"?  The iPhone app I was looking for upgraded to "gunning you down with an AK47".

Obviously some of my reaction was down to my begrudging wakefulness, which as it happens led to my bladder begging for attention which in turn led to me getting out of bed, rather adding insult to injury. Speaking of injury, Saturday's exertions at the gym had had a rather detrimental effect and I discovered upon arising that all the muscles in my body had died peacefully in their sleep and were in an advanced state of rigor mortis.

But back to the inappropriate sweetie.  Once I'd had a bit more sleep I started to wonder if I was being unnecessarily affronted and tried to think of other instances where I'd been referred to in such terms and whether it had bothered me.

An East End geezer I used to know called Trev would often call me "Treacle" and I found it rather endearing. A former boss had a habit of calling everyone, including me, "petal" or "flower" and I didn't mind that, but teenage retail assistants who call you "hun" irritate me a little and I've been known to snort derisively at blog commenters who use the term in their responses, usually because they're disagreeing with me at the time and wish to be condescending.  So, as with most things I think this is about context.

I'm of the opinion that if you know me a "darling", "sweetie" or "babe" is probably okay, but if you're a generation younger than me, or a stranger, or both then it's probably going to get on my wick a bit.  There's a reason that a well-aimed "sweetheart" can be used as artillery in conversational warfare. It effectively puts someone in their place by telling them that you don't really have much in the way of respect for them.  Where someone knows you well it indicates a fondness and familiarity.  The tricky bit comes where people confuse informality with intimacy (or in the case of my phone friend, 6 o'clock in the morning with "a reasonable hour") and this can be unintentionally jarring.

So where do you stand on this?  At what point to find this kind of familiarity annoying?  Is there any difference between a member of the opposite sex calling you "sweetie", and someone of the same sex using this or a similar word?  As a woman I'm not sure how often men are addressed this way.  If you're a bloke does it bother you, cupcake?

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