When I was a kid I noticed something about people who called me Dear

It seemed that the older a person was, the more likely they were to call me Dear and not Gary

(Young Man came in second)

Then I grew up and Dear mostly disappeared except for my grandmother and my Aunt Peg and sometimes Mom would write me and start the letter Dear Heart

And now I have grown old and Dear has crept into my own vocabulary

I call a lot of people at work Dear now which seems so natural because they are dear to me and yet sometimes I forget their name

And on social media I call some of my dear friends Dear Abbie or Dear Alice or Dear Jack

There once was an actor named Peter Ustinov who took Dear to the limit by entitling his 1977 autobiography Dear Me

The curious may find a 42-page excerpt on Google Books

Tell them your creepy friend Gary sent you, Dear