Hey there, Sugar Bear.
Relationship advice from sophomore boys
Me: Did you just call him by a pet name?
Sophomore: Yes. Don’t you call your husband by a pet name?
Me: No.
Students: What? You don’t? You don’t love him. You’re basically just roommates.
Me: Bro, we are 20 years into our marriage, I think we are good.
Sophomore: No, Mrs. D, it’s time to spice it up. Go home and call him your “boo thang sugar bear.” Then, come back and tell us how much better things are.
This discussion, my friends, began a ten-minute conversation involving these children who haven’t been alive as long as I have been married, telling me how to have a healthy relationship. I might have added they couldn’t even date someone for longer than a month, but that fact did not seem to matter. They were certain using a pet name was the best way to build a wonderful relationship. Their persistence had me agreeing to arriving home and calling my husband by any of these names. They asked me to record his reaction because they were certain he would be overcome with joy at this adoring language.
I did arrive home saying, “Why hello my boo thang, sugar bear.” I almost said it without laughing hysterically, almost. My husband asked what words had just come out of my mouth and if I was having some sort of stroke. After filling him in on the day’s conversation, he just shook his head and laughed.
The next day, as promised, this pack of wild sophomore boys showed up at my classroom door asking how it went. They were invested in this; in a way I wish they invested in their classwork. When I told them I couldn’t say it without laughing and my husband just laughed and asked what was wrong with me, they were appalled. I am talking mouths agape, clutch the pearls, appalled. One looked to another and said, “See, it’s because you don’t do it enough. That’s the problem.”
Educators often hear how important it is to build relationships with students. It’s cliched phrase most roll their eyes at. On this day, building relationships looked like listening to them give what they believed to be rock solid advice about relationships. It meant I would actually do what they suggested because day after day I was asking them to trust me and challenging them to do things differently.
A year later, one of the students stood by my room talking to me about his junior year when he looked at me and asked, “How’s Sugar Bear doing?” What could I do but laugh and say, “Sugar Bear is great, thanks for asking.”