PHILADELPHIA, PA—Angela Bertram, 39, known to friends and associates as a respectable, hard-working individual, fielded a personal call on Monday at Rogers & Johnson, the multi-million dollar law firm where she is employed. At 2:26 witnesses reported that Bertram, who "is great at picking up slack and an incredible asset to the company," began a casual conversation with her father, Kurt Cunningham, 71.
"When [Bertram] answered the phone, she got all excited and started shrieking, yelling 'Daddy! Daddy!' and fanning herself with her hand like a schoolgirl," recalls coworker, Jeremy Leipowitz, with a chuckle. "She calmed down after a minute, and most of their chat was about plans for a family reunion or something like that, real normal stuff. When they started saying their goodbyes, though, that's when it got interesting again. I don't think I'll ever be able to take her seriously the same way. I mean really, she sounded like an eight-year-old."
Mrs. Bertram, who is an esteemed practicing attorney well on her way to becoming a partner in the firm, still refers to her father solely as "daddy." Despite having earned her bachelor's degree in linguistics at Cornell University before graduating with honors from Harvard's law school, this fully grown woman insists on referring to her elderly father with what sociologists have deemed "the most infantile paternal designator in common use."
Andrew Bertram, Angela's husband, shared some of the reservations he had when he first encountered this phenomenon from his now-wife. "The day I met her parents, I asked their permission to marry her, and then we stayed for dinner. An[gela] said, 'Daddy, please pass the salt' or something like that, and without even thinking I reached for it. Kurt did too, and that's when I realized she might not have been as mature as I originally thought."
He further noted that his own daughters stopped calling him "daddy" as early as age 3, opting for the more common variant "dad," or in playful conversation "pops." "Yeah, I thought it was odd and that she was 25 years too old to be talking to Kurt that way, but if he doesn't have a problem with it, what can I do?"
When asked to comment on her preferred means of addressing her parent, Bertram simply stated "I'll always be his little girl and he'll always be my daddy. I just can't call him anything else without it being weird."