I'd been amused by this letter, because my parents were "Mom" and "Pete" (and still are, it's just my father has been dead for 30+ years of that.)
My father was a very formal sort of human in basically every other circumstance but when I was tiny, my much older brother and sister (who were in late high school at that point) started calling him Pete to tease him. I got away with it, as pet of the family, and then it stuck.
(I actually don't know what my siblings called him when they were little, now I think about it. It just never came up.)
I occasionally had to pause and explain, and it amused my friends who met him, because he was other wise Very Formal (and it definitely amused the college students and grad students who watched me do that.) But he loved it, and I loved it, and he was clear about who else he'd accept it from.
(And my mom has a fine line in raising an eyebrow and quelling bad behavior with almost no words, but Pete had her beat hands down in terms of respect and knocking off what I was doing when that was needed.)
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My father was a very formal sort of human in basically every other circumstance but when I was tiny, my much older brother and sister (who were in late high school at that point) started calling him Pete to tease him. I got away with it, as pet of the family, and then it stuck.
(I actually don't know what my siblings called him when they were little, now I think about it. It just never came up.)
I occasionally had to pause and explain, and it amused my friends who met him, because he was other wise Very Formal (and it definitely amused the college students and grad students who watched me do that.) But he loved it, and I loved it, and he was clear about who else he'd accept it from.
(And my mom has a fine line in raising an eyebrow and quelling bad behavior with almost no words, but Pete had her beat hands down in terms of respect and knocking off what I was doing when that was needed.)