I met Chris for dinner after I went to the bank about some of our money matters. We were catching up on each other’s day:

“The guy at the bank kept calling you my husband. I told him you weren’t…”

“Old habits die hard.”

“I guess ‘significant other’ hasn’t quite caught on. It’s kind of formal, anyway.”

“What would you want them to call me?”

I smiled adoringly at him. “You would be my ‘old man’.”

“Oh right. Then would they call you my ‘old lady’?”

“I prefer to be your ‘queen’….I guess they could call you my ‘prince charming’.”

Chris got that funny look on his face, the look that means his funny bone is clicking into place. “…do you think that if a real royal family, and you had a son…?”

“NO!” I said. “That’s not allowed.”

“Why not? there could be a prince charming the first…”

“No, it’s against the rules.”

“What rules? If you were King, you could do what you wanted.”

“You could not! The same rules that let you be King would dictate what sort of names you could use to name the princes.”

“…and then he would grow up to be King Charming…”

My turn now. “Of course if it were an Emperor…maybe in China…”

“The Ming Dynasty?”

“Yeah…Emperor Char Ming.”