I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a “girly girl”. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a tom-boy. I grew up rough-housing with my brothers, and got pretty good at learning how to handle myself. One brother managed to lose a thumbnail owing to my particular brand of self defence, another had his face smashed off a windowsill which resulted in a rather nasty broken nose and a lot of explaining/lying as to how the incident occurred to my parents. I look at my girlfriends and they’re somewhat daintier than I am. Even those with brothers would have been far more likely to run to mum and dad to snitch on their siblings if they were doing something unpleasant rather than just roll their sleeves up and give them a good battering themselves. I’ve always felt more at home in the company of guys because you rarely have to watch your P’s & Q’s and they tend to find it amusing rather than offensive if your language gets more foul the more you drink...which mine invariably does.
Don’t get me wrong...I’m feminine. It’s not like I’m a big butch man-woman or anything weird like that. I love my shoes and handbags as much as the next girl, and I like nothing better than glamming up for a night out. I just don’t go in for all of the behavioural etiquette rules that many girls appear to live by. I’m not a diva/princess. I’m not into pink and sparkly, (although I do appreciate the attraction) I can’t do dainty little lady-like “eh-choo” dry-sneezes, (when I sneeze the whole world falls out of my nostrils, and I make a noise not dissimilar to an F1 racing car as it passes you at a gazillion miles an hour). I’m also not really a coy, giggly kind of girl...in fact I’ve been told that my laugh is downright dirty, and you can usually hear it carrying across our entire office floor.
With this in mind then, imagine my surprise when during a recent date with Le Linguiste (owing to his fluency in French) he out right accused me of being girly? Now this is a guy who would really have been basing his judgements on first impressions, and I knew that I hadn’t been anything other than my usual self - as I find it impossible to be anything other than “me”. So how could our opinions of “me” differ so dramatically? I hadn’t squealed at delight over anything, I hadn’t clapped my hands or jumped up and down in an excited manner, I hadn’t giggled like a girly girl and I hadn’t even bothered to flutter my eyelashes at him. I should state that in all fairness this was because his eyelashes were far more impressive and quite frankly I didn’t like the competition.
In fact during the course of this first date, I’d managed to rather spectacularly trip myself up (klutz), I’d spilt my drink (double klutz) I was waaay too comfortable around him and had caught myself slouching on a couple of occasions, and as our date had started in the early afternoon I was dressed casually and wearing flat ballet pumps. Nothing about me was saying “girly”, I’m quite certain of it, and yet here he was, convinced by my girliness. I can only assume he knows some really butch women! Now I could have passed this off as a one off - perhaps my nerves had got the better of me and I’d been uncharacteristically calm and demure around him on our first meeting, but he’s since spent another full day with me, spent hours on the phone to me and I feel more than confident that I’m being myself around him...and yet he still feels it’s appropriate to call me... “Baby”.
Now I can hear some of you cooing and ahhhing with remarks like “awww, isn’t that lovely” and “oh it’s so nice when a guy feels comfortable enough to give you affectionate names” etc, but it’s just further compounding my worries that he has me mistaken for someone else. My ex-husband called me Princess once and he nearly lost his teeth. I could manage “Hun”, “Darling”, and even “Babe” (although the latter makes me think of that talking pig) but if he’d ever called me baby I think I would have punched him in the face and told him to man-up! Baby suggests something tiny, and delicate...and in it’s very essence, something kind of...well...helpless. It’s a name you’d give someone who perhaps needed protecting from the big bad world. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a strong, independent woman. I’ve never needed a man, and I cope well on my own. That’s just the way I roll people – and so probably the most annoying thing about this whole incident is that for some bizarre reason I didn’t actually mind Le Linguiste calling me baby. Did it confuse me? For sure. Did it make me doubt whether he was actually talking to me or some other random stood behind me? Definitely – but did it generate a violent rage within me? No. Did it make me want to projectile vomit at the mushiness of his sentiment? No. In fact it actually made me feel kind of good inside.
It’s been a long while since anyone’s even wanted to treat me like I need protecting from anything...and maybe, after the last few years - fire fighting against bereavement, and divorce, heartbreak and humiliation - pretending that I was strong enough to handle it all on my own, and forcing a smile onto my face even though inside I felt dead, broken and hollow – maybe to have a few minutes protection from a somewhat-stranger was just what I needed? Maybe with his fresh eyes he was able to look closely enough to see the little girl who needed to feel safe again – just for a moment – instead of the tom-boy, straight talking, strong willed young woman I’ve allowed myself to become? Who knows? But for now, I’ll let him get away with it...just while I re-charge... just don’t tell anyone I’m enjoying it though okay?
It could ruin my reputation ;o)
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