14 November 2012

to sir with love.


Although the following post isn't particular to my travels, my recent trips hither and thither have caused me to zero in on a tendency—a trend, you might say—that otherwise might have escaped my notice. 

More and more people, I find, are addressing me as 'sir,' and I find it disturbing and unacceptable. When I first went through airport security on Friday, a middle-aged female TSA agent said to me, 'Thank you, sir' as she handed me back my boarding pass and license. Well, I don't know about you, but I'd actually prefer a surly, uncommunicative agent to one who bestows honorifics upon me that are reserved for the aged and infirm. I don't wish to be 'respected' (if that's the right word) by means of this tiny, grating word. 

Similarly, teenagers working part-time in the service industry all over this country seem to imagine that I'm a sir. Since when do teenagers ever try to be polite—even when their jobs proscribe it? I'll tell you when... When they see a droopy, ashen, broken-down husk of a man hobble up to the cash register with a cane in one hand and an antique ear trumpet in the other. Think I'm exaggerating? Well, of course I am—I don't own an ear trumpet—but that's the way I picture myself every time some spotty kid in an logo-embroidered smock hands me my change. (They're probably even disgusted that sometimes I pay with cash. Who does such a thing? I might just as well try to barter with animal pelts and loose tobacco.)

Do you get what I'm saying here? If you could see who I am deep down in the furthest reaches of this mortal coil, you'd know for sure that I wasn't a sir. I'm just a guy. That's all. I'm just some guy who is trying to board a 737 or get an oil change or order a burrito. There's no need to hand me a scepter and crown my head with a chaplet made of ivy leaf. And don't you dare look at me from across that great distance that separates a young person reveling in his hopes and dreams and an old(er) person trying to remember where he set down his keys... because you listen to me: I've looked across that distance from the other direction before—and when I was standing where you're standing right now, glaring with contempt at the Adult World, I sure as hell didn't refer to anybody as sir. Why do people need to be referred to at all? 'Thank you' does the job just as well as 'thank you, sir'—unless you're in the military, I suppose. And no, I don't fucking need any help taking my groceries to the car, you giant sebaceous gland. 

13 comments:

  1. yep. hate it too. though admittedly i'm okay with "miss". i'm just worried that "ma'am" is gaining traction these days. i don't think i'd mind "madame" -- it's silly enough that i'd welcome it.

    what if they started calling you "milord" or just "lord"? how about "mister"? still rankle?

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    1. Nobody ever calls me mister, so I don't know... I prefer the more egalitarian 'Hey, you' in most circumstances.

      Yeah, women have a whole different situation going on—with different honorifics with young/unmarried and old(er)/married. If I were a woman under 50 and someone called me 'ma'am' I'm knee that sorry bastard in the balls.

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  2. My grandmother lived to be about 94 or 95, and I remember one of the last times I saw her, she was talking about how she was 24 when she got married, and she remarked about it "I'm that same person now; I don't think of myself as a 95 year old woman, it's just that my body is 95 years old." On one hand you could take that as "Well, yeah, of course", like it isn't saying anything substantial, or you could even say "That would be sad if a person really didn't change or grow from 24 to 95."- which I don't think is what she was getting at, and wouldn't describe her. I think she was just saying that once she was a fully-defined person with a continuity of experiences, thoughts and opinions, time stopped being a useful measure of what "kind of person" she was. In other words, there was a disconnect between who she felt like she was and who the clock/calandar/etc said she was. When she died later that year, it felt like it was the funeral of a 24 year old who lived seventy more years, than a 94 year old's funeral... if you get what I'm saying.

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    1. Wow! What a great, poignant story, BB! You need your own blog!

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    2. Thanks David. GR is kind of my blog I guess.

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    3. I love this - and I am understanding this more and more the older I get. I try so hard not to treat elderly people like they are infants like most people do. And I also hate the use of age related terms like calling them old people, seniors or the elderly. While they are all factually correct, they all seem so derogatory and borderline dismissive.

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  3. And the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
    —William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

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    1. WHAT'S YOUR POINT, MORAIS?
      —David Kowalski, Obscene Chewing blog

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  4. I get called 'ma'am' so often that on the rare occasion I am called 'miss' I grab the speaker's face and furiously make-out with him/her.

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    1. I think those who call you miss are banking on that response!

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  5. You have literally made me laugh out loud. I found you on Goodreads via one of your reviews. You're hilarious and a fantastic writer! You have a new blog follower.

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    1. Thanks so much, Niki. Now that we're friends on Goodreads too, does that make us bitextual? Harharhar... (Sorry.)

      Welcome...

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  6. The other day, some guy on the street referred to me as "a lady with a dog". It was even worse than being called ma'am.

    Worse yet, this guy seemed to be about my age - which I know is becoming an increasingly broader demographic as I age. I tend to think anyone approximately 5 years older or 15 years younger is "about my age".

    It then lead me down a path of how it seems there are more terms of "respect" like this that indicate a woman's age than there are for men, so I am very pleased to see that "sir" insults men just as much as the feminine counterpart does women.

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