Julep: Just say "No."

Twinks, your post inspired me to recall a recent irritation I meant to blog about....

Unwilling to be called Grandma or Grams or Nana or anything that the general population would recognize as a cognomen for a grandmother, my MIL has chosen her own cutesy-pie nickname for the Bear to call her. Fine, whatever. I think it's cloying, but I can deal. My FIL says - quite reasonably, in my opinion - that we can wait to see what the Bear wants to call him. All well and good, but in the 1.5 years before the Bear starts verbalizing, we have to call him something. I have opted for "Granddad." Mr. J was very attached to his mother's father, now deceased, whom he called "Granddaddy," and this seems like a nice homage. Plus we are already calling my stepdad Grandpa and my dad Grandpa De (as his own father was called - not that he has met the Bear or anything); personally I dislike the P grandpa names (hearing people talk of "Peepaw" makes me shudder), plus Mr. J's other grandfather is still living and goes by Pawpaw so I can chalk it up to avoiding confusion.

OK, so, we call Mr-Papa "Granddad" until the Bear can speak for himself, right? Well, that's not precious enough for my MIL. She thinks the Bear should call him "The Captain." Let us be clear that this is not in reference to any actual professional qualifications: it's not as though Mr-Papa is an airline pilot or a former Navy officer. No, it's a reference to their yacht. If the rest of the family referred to him as "The Captain" or if Bear somehow came up with this for himself based on the one trip he has taken to said yacht, that might be different (although honestly, not really), but for her to just dream it up? To quote Steel Magnolias, "An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure."

The first time she came up with this idea, I asked when she had replaced Tenneille. Never one to accept a "no" graciously, she tried floating it again a few weeks later, and again I shot her down. I have been more than clear that this is NOT going to fly. I thought this stupidity was dead and buried until I went to pick the Bear up over at the in-laws' house last weekend. Bear had spent an hour or so hanging out with Mr-Papa while Mr. J and I ran some errands - my MIL had just gotten home, and she was bouncing him around and saying, "Did you have a fun time with Cappy?"

I said, "MIL, we are not calling him that." She huffed, "Why not?" and I said, "Because it's ridiculous." I laughed when I said it, I added something else about the 70s rock band, but I was clearly not kidding. And I'm not sorry. She refuses to pay attention to what she doesn't want to hear, and the only way to make a point with her is to drive it home with all the subtlety of a Mack truck.

So two days later, I get home from work to hear from Mr. J that I "really hurt [his] mom's feelings the other day." I asked him if there was any doubt in his mind prior to the weekend that I was completely opposed to "The Captain" nickname, and whether I would be in my rights to declare myself offended that she would deliberately ignore my clearly expressed wishes. He told me not to put him in the middle of it ... as though I were the one who took the first opportunity to report the story with the "you won't believe what she said" big eyes and pouty face!

You can carbon-date her emotional maturity to the year she graduated high school. Get over it, lady. We're not calling him The Captain.