Learning to Call Her 'Sweetheart'

"Engineer Chris (he never calls my name without that appendage), I congratulate you and your wife on this beautiful achievement (we were commissioning my wife's new Event Centre). I can see that you speak very well, but how can you call your wife by name in a public gathering like this? Don't you have a pet name by which you call your wife? Now the whole world knows her name." #HusbandAndWifePetNames

The look on his face warned me he wasn’t joking. His words hit me like a bolt out of the blues.

I am usually ready for brickbats that follow my presentations, but not on this occasion. The angle my pastor came from was not only completely alien to me, it was too narrow to give me manoeuvring room. Therefore I was caught too unprepared for any sensible response. If I wasn't standing right next to him in front of this huge audience, I would have ducked for cover. I needed to say something, but what? I felt for my hat and adjusted it again over my head. I had a discomforting feeling it was going to fall off!

I was joggling my mind for some response. “Look, you are not one to be carpeted with so much ease,” I reminded myself. Therefore I quickly formed an explanation, but before I could utter it intelligibly from my mouth, my pastor, who at this time was carefully watching my lips, hit again below the belt.

"What exactly are you trying to say?" he queried, as I gazed blankly into his face.

When I found my voice again I lowered the volume a little bit and instinctively pushed the microphone in his hand away from us so that we could get into some confidential exchange.

"Pastor, what I am trying to say is that there is a pet name that I sometimes call my wife. What I like about the name is that whenever I call it she promptly answers me, 'sir!' Maybe I should be calling her that name from now on."

At this time I must confess that I was feeling a bit shaky on one of my legs because the expression on my pastor's face remained anything but jocular.

"And what is the name?" he asked directly into the microphone, to the hearing of everyone.

“Why can't this man understand that this is a private discussion?” I wondered silently. "Yellow," I whispered in answer to his question so that the crowd will not hear.

"My friend, what kind of name is that?" he intoned into the microphone.

Before I could explain that “Yellow” was the pet name given to my wife by her parents when she was younger and how I patronise the name from time to time, my pastor threw another jab.

"What is Yellow? How can you call your wife Yellow?"

There was wild laughter in the crowd. He spat the words out, twisting his face in total disagreement. Apparently disgusted with my antics, he transferred his gaze to the audience.

"Where is the woman you call Esther?" His critical eyes took a trip round the place and he beckoned to my wife from the crowd. "Come and stand near me," he commanded.

I couldn't quite take up issues with my pastor on this pet name that I had chosen on the spur of the moment. To begin with, my wife is somewhat dark in complexion. Therefore calling her Yellow was not a fitting tribute to her God-given chocolatey glow. Come to think of it, it is incomprehensible how her parents came by such an incongruous name for a dark person. Perhaps she was fair complexioned at the time they named her, but time does change all of us, doesn't it?

But, really, how well does 'Yellow' ring as a romantic name? Perhaps I should have simply settled for 'Chocolate.' Yes! How did I not remember that? That, surely, would have taken care of my pastor’s angst. But now I appeared to have given myself off publicly as being romantically naive.

I was getting ready to give up, and my pastor sensed it. This unrelenting man was ready to deliver the knockout blow because he knew I had run out of options.

He put the microphone to my wife's mouth and asked pointedly, "Do you want your husband to call you a pet name?"

Trust women. "Yes, Pastor," came a conspiratorial reply from a voice she had loaded with contrived shyness.

"Well, your husband does not know what pet name to call you. Now I am going to ask you to choose one for him. What name do you want him to call you from now on?"

"Sweetheart!"

It sounded so outlandish! I could feel my entire being revolting, but the crowd erupted in cheers of approval. Well, I had lost this battle and I knew it. This was going to open a whole new chapter in my life and I didn't quite know how I was going to cope. Sweetheart! What a name for me to adjust to!

When it comes to things like this, I am an unrepentant African man. The average African man does not call his wife special names. He calls her by her given name.

But this was just the beginning of my troubles. How did I cope? Find out from my book Laughing Over Serious Matters. Get it from my website.