As far as pet names go, it takes a while for some people to feel comfortable using “babe,” “baby,” “honey,” and “sweetheart.” Too often, though, those who have yet to reach that stage fall onto the cheap Bogart-emulating “kid.”

People who use “kid” probably feel like they are hot shit, because it is vaguely condescending to the person being addressed and makes the speaker seem older, wiser and cooler.

This is all well and good. But consider for a moment how the person on the receiving end of a “kid” feels. Their minds are racing. They will spout, “Who are you calling kid?” and “You’re not so big,” but underneath they will wonder if their date-ability has been decimated because they are a little young.

The conventional wisdom on dating and age runs the spectrum from, “If there’s grass on the field, play ball,” to, “16 will get you 20.” But in the heat of the moment, the solution is never that clear. Variables compound on top of each other and spin out of control until any black-and-white has spun to gray.

There is no easy way to decide when the line is crossed. Of course the legal age of consent is 18 years old in Wisconsin, which creates sticky situations. Fifteen-year-olds might postpone sexual exploration because of fear of pregnancy, disease or damnation, but none would voluntarily deny their urges for people over/under 18 just because they themselves had not reached the age of consent.

Even calling your junior sweetheart by a nickname like “kid” inspires a knee-jerk reaction of indignation. It is like telling a child who is emotionally, physically and mentally prepared for a ride at an amusement park they missed the height requirement by an inch.

The world of sexuality has always been a dangerous place for anyone. Down the street from sunny Sunday hangover sex and candle-lit beach trysts are pedophiles, rape and STDs. But acting out of fear will never solve anything, from protecting our children to protecting our nation.

“America’s fears about child sexuality are both peculiarly contemporary,” wrote journalist Judith Levine in her book “Harmful to Minors,” “and forged deep in history … fear got its claws into America in the late twentieth century and … abetted by a sentimental, sometimes cynical, politics of child protectionism, it now dominates the ways we think and act about children’s sexuality.”

Sex clearly exists for children — just ask Freud. Pretending that it does not might be doing far more harm than good. We are libidinous creatures, after all.

How much energy is wasted trying to hide Janet Jackson’s nipples and Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues from our children? What is to fear — what we’re protecting kids from or the protection itself?

Dan Savage is the most widely syndicated sex columnist in the world and offered his opinion on making children’s sexuality a pink elephant in a recent column. “To the Bible-thumpers out there pushing abstinence education … if you persist in your attempts to stamp out sexual desire in young people — you will continue to reap a whirlwind of often hilarious unintended consequences, from young straight people having casual anal sex (you can get f-cked in the ass and still be a virgin, right?), to babies stuffed in trash cans at proms.”

More often than not, teen pregnancy is very problematic for everyone involved. Admittedly, for every 10 or so stories about “that girl from high school got pregnant and ruined her life,” there is a tale of a beautiful, healthy family growing out of what might have been originally seen as a very uncomfortable, exceptional situation.

One standard argument thrown at parents of beleaguered under-agers will recant how teen pregnancies and May-December romances were the norm in medieval times. This is weak. The great romantic ideals, Romeo and Juliet, were very young. Clearly, having a brood of kids before 20 would be the norm at a time when life expectancies rarely exceeded 30.

The age of consent is nowhere near standard around the world, or even in the States, and it shouldn’t be. Individual states, certainly individual countries, should examine the cultural and societal factors at play for themselves.

Clearly, age-of-consent laws are necessary evils. Some romances are not healthy and detrimental to the younger parties. Savage has in previous columns decried the negative effects of repressed teens taking up with slightly perverted 30-somethings, gay or straight.

But the question of age and sex (or age and love) is sometimes not the best guideline. For example, the parents of a girl two months shy of 18 prosecute her boyfriend, who turned 18 two months ago, because they don’t approve of him. Is the boyfriend a pedophile?

Boys and girls mature at different rates. A female freshman in college could be on the same level as a male freshman in high school. Does that mean they shouldn’t date? A 16-year-old girl falls for a 20-year-old boy. Is that too big of a gap? What if the girl is more mature than the boy, all their friends and her parents?

For the last quarter of my life, I’ve been an avid admirer of girls in the 18 to 22-year-old age group. Why should I have any reason to believe this will change when I grow old? My ETA to “dirty old man” is only 15 years!

For better or worse, rules are rules. They are there for our protection. On the topic of protection, whether or not you can legally buy the ticket and take the ride, never hop on without buckling your safety harness.