baby talk

I love Belinda through and through. She loves me even more than that, which is totally incomprehensible to me, mostly because I'm a man.

Occasionally though, she does a few things that really put me over the edge.

Belinda loves to baby talk to me. Baby talk is a perfectly normal and lovely way to express your emotions and feelings of intimacy to the person you love. I actually like it. It's cute, it allows us to banter in a cutesy way, and it usually is a good precursor to snuggling. Who doesn't like snuggling?

The thing that gets me is when Belinda bursts out with the baby speak. At the seemingly most unromantic moments in life. On line at Starbucks. On the subway at crush time. Standing next to a homeless dude while waiting to cross the street. Walking through the worst neighborhood in the city, with prostitution and crack deals and homelessness going on all around us as we try to get through it all as quickly as possible.

I totally don't get it.

I love the baby talk when we're home. When we're getting close on the couch, spooning in bed. Even when we're cooking and doing the domestic togetherness thing. That's actually romantic. But at Starbucks? What the hell is romantic about Starbucks? I can assure you there will be no spooning happening while the milk for our lattes and macchiatos gets steamed.

I'm a very private person. I do not like other people, especially total strangers, to know about my personal life at all. I like to be cutesy and romantic as the next guy, I just like it at home. So when Belinda starts with the baby talk, at the supermarket, next to the plastic wrap, I tend to get a little grouchy. I see it as letting total strangers in on our little secret love life.

Belinda says it's because she feels that way about me all the time. In which case, I refer to you back to the first paragraph...