I don't know what to do about "honey bunny."
Being called "honey bunny" isn't a bad thing unless it's spoken by one Mafia hitman to another in a Francis Ford Coppola movie. I should shrug it off, and I have shrugged it off several times. But it's like shrugging off a mosquito. It comes right back and buzzes in my ear. The first time it happened, at a drive-thru window, I was both amused and bemused. "Honey?" I thought. "Bunny?"
Some people sprinkle endearments the way I sprinkle Parmesan. That's fine. If being called "sweetheart" is the worst thing that happens to me all week, I'm having a good week.
Except, well, I do wish the people who call me "honey" weren't nearly always young women.
That suggests they think I'm cute, and I don't mean "cute" as in Emma Watson. I mean "cute" as in the old rabbit whispering "hush" in "Goodnight Moon."
Of course, I am a grandma, if not an old rabbit, and I didn't become a grandma when I was still in my 20s. So what's my problem?
I had to think about it, but endearments from young people remind me of the way my older sister's friends treated me when I was 8 years old. That is, they were friendly yet dismissive.
They patted my head and turned away. Of course, I doubtless behaved the same to my youngers every chance I had, so this is karmic justice coming full circle now. "Honey bunny" suggests I've dressed up in my mommy's high heels to pay a call on the drive-thru window. "Look how cute," the workers say as I tootle away in my Lightning McQueen pedal car.
Not that I run into this kind of thing a lot.
I see it about as often as young people feel dismissed because they don't remember Richard Nixon or the Beatles. Certainly, I see it far less often than young men of color see the human equivalent of raised hackles and warning growls when they're at the mall with friends.
Men in general, of course, must curb their friendliness. My husband and I once visited a city library branch with our granddaughter. In the children's department, my granddaughter and I sat down to read a book while my husband browsed nearby. Very soon he was approached by a librarian. Was he here with a child? the librarian asked.
He was, my husband said, indicating our granddaughter, curled on my lap. He wasn't insulted. We both know too well the dangers the librarian was guarding against. Still, talk about social assumptions. Pity the man interested in writing or illustrating picture books because he's suspect anywhere he might go to research the field.
Then there's the willingness of the innocent to feel guilty. The moment I see a police car in my rear-view mirror, I couldn't swear I don't have a bank haul in my public-radio grocery bag and a body stuffed under the seat. That would account for my inclination -- never obeyed, but it's there -- to hit the gas and peel away like Bonnie Parker.
Speaking of imaginary crime, when I was 10 years old, I once walked from school to a nearby Woolworth store, where I bought a 3 Musketeers candy bar and nibbled it while drifting up and down the store aisles. I had eaten most of it when a woman with a Woolworth badge blocked my way.
"When were you going to pay for that candy?" she asked.
In an instant, I saw the hopelessness of my position. Yes, the clerk who had taken my money might remember me, but maybe not. Also, I was not a girl who left school looking like I had just arrived. I was classroom grubby. I didn't carry a comb. My fingers were literally sticky.
I paid for the candy again. It galls me to this day.
So you know what? I'm sorry I even mentioned the honey-bunny business. Let this friendly young woman go nuts with "honey bunnies" and "bunny wunnies" and "sweetie-weeties." People accepting of others are rare enough in this world. I may even start throwing around a few endearments myself, you little snookums, you.
Write to Margo Bartlett at margo.bartlett@gmail.com.