I seem to have picked up a bad habit. Well. Another one. It’s happened the past few months. It’s completely age-inappropriate. 

Somehow, the word, “Dear …” has snuck into my daily vocabulary. It’s wrong. I’m too young to be calling people — “Dear …” Either that, or I’m turning into the witch from “Hansel & Gretel.” 

For those who attended or send your children to public school, “Hansel & Gretel” is the Late Middle Ages fable, later copied by the Brothers Grim in the early 19th century. It’s about how a punk-asterisk father lets his new, hag wife, talk him into abandoning his two lovable kids in the woods so the new missus can get more gruel rations or something. The kids stumble upon a gingerbread house, owned by a cannibalistic witch (not played by Hillary Clinton as she wasn’t born quite yet then). The Crone (good band name) has bad teeth, poor posture and says things like, “Hello — my pretties …!” 

I haven’t stooped to chortling things like, “… my pretties” or, “… my plump little dumplings!!” But, I’m catching myself adding the word, “Dear …” to my conversations. Worse? I’m saying it in restaurants. To waitresses. Young, fetching waitresses. 

To my credit, I don’t squint when I say, “Dear …” I don’t double over and guffaw. I don’t reach into a moth-eaten sow’s ear coin purse, offer a hearty, “Mwa ha ha ha ha …” and suggest, “… here’s a bright farthing if you will but follow me out to the parking lot and crawl into the trunk of my car........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal