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Adulthood Is Awesome. Embrace It.
Okay, maybe it’s just the existential crankiness that comes from turning 31 today, but I have to get this off my chest: Why do people complain about being called “mister,” “miss,” “sir,” or “ma’am”?
I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. If one was past puberty, one was a mister or a miss. My babysitter was Ms. Stacy; my sister’s best friend’s mom was Ms. Sheri; the gentlemen who owned the pool across the street was Mr. Hazelwood — that was even how I referred to him when I told my parents of his recent death. It was the same dynamic at school and a church. As kids, we were stuck with just first names, but the adults had titles! Mr. and Mrs. for most, Brother and Sister for the really old school folks in the congregation.
Then we moved to the Kansas City area. My first Sunday, I was introduced to the Sunday School teacher who laughed when I tried to call him Mr. Robin. This has been a recurring experience ever since — I attempt to show some respect to an adult, and the responses are variations on “Mr./Ms.So-and So is my father/mother” or “Are you trying to make me feel old?” (I especially find the latter type strange when the speaker is clearly over 60).
People seem to believe it’s better to be addressed as a kid without a title, rather than an adult with one. To which I say, “Do you remember being a kid?” To be a child is to lack agency. Someone else tells you what to eat, what to wear, when to sleep. You go to a school where every minute of your day is controlled by someone else; you can’t even empty your bowels without permission. You are forced to associate with other kids with whom you may have nothing in common, save geographical and birthdate proximity.
Contrast that with being an adult. You choose your God, your spouse, your friends, your career, your menu, your clothes. Sure, the choices can be overwhelming, but you have choices! You have agency over your own life. Being an adult is so much more awesome than being a kid; I can’t imagine why anyone would romanticize a life of helplessness over a life of agency. And further, I don’t understand why one would get offended at being considered an awesome adult instead of powerless kid.
Now, sure, I prefer being on a first-name basis with my peers. But just as the proper response to someone holding the door for you is “Thank you,” the proper response to “Nice to meet you, sir,” is “You’re welcome, ma’am, and you can call me _____.” Not, “Are you trying to make me feel old?”*
* Sergeants are allowed to reply, “Don’t call me sir; I work for a living!”
Image Credit: Flickr user Svein Halvor Halvorsen.
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That was actually the original title of this post. When they promoted it, the editors had to remove the copyrighted image, which of course made the title a bit strange.
I guess Mr and Mrs is good. But like Dr Lu it would be unnatural for me. Actually, I never use names at all. It seems disrespectful. It’s your name! Who am I to go around using your name?
But anyway, here’s what bothers me… people using sir across or down rather than up.
To say sir to your teacher or father is respectful. To say “Thank you, sir” to the mail boy is mockery.
I go back and forth on the titles thing in the classroom. Ultimately what makes me stick with first names is the utterly unprincipled fact that it is easier to remember 97 names that don’t all start with Mr…
Outside the classroom, I try not to get hung up on titles -I try to remember to tell my students that my name is fine, once they graduate.
Having said that, it took 3 years to get used to calling my teachers by their names, and I still slip up from time to time.
Outside of those positions of authority, though, I find the informality of American conversation quite nice. As Aaron Miller said, we despise royalty and all the trappings there-of.
Happy Birthday, Miss Amy! (that’s from my kids)
Hope you have a wonderful birthday month (that’s a PsychLynne thing, not a Southern thing)
I love being an adult, hate it when cashiers start calling me by my first name, and will teach my toddler to call everyone over the age of 16 “Mr./Mrs./Miss”… so I guess I’m in good company here. :)
When I was in my twenties I was riding the bus home after work. The bus was full and a young lady who was pregnant got onto the bus I offered her my seat but she refused at first to take the seat. I said please take my seat as a favor to me. I told her if any of the nuns from elementary school found out I was seated and you had to stand I would be in deep trouble. She laughed and said I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble and she took the seat.
I have seen other acts of chivalry on the bus. A woman dropped her purse and it slid across the aisle. A total stranger kicked it back across the aisle to her. Happy Birthday.
Say that my superior is named John Smith.
If I go up to him and say, “hello Mr. Smith,” and he replies, “call me John,” which one of us is truly exercising authority?
After all, the superior’s reply is phrased as an order. If I continued to refer to him as “Mr. Smith” it would be an act of insubordination!
Informality means that the members of the society have fewer “signposts” available to them to navigate the social “roadmap”, and therefore authority ends up being exercised explicitly.
In other words, saying “call me John” is not a sign of a more democratuic hierarchy, but rather an exercise in explicit domination on the part of the superior to impress upon the subordinate their lack of decision-making authority.
This is why being called “sir” or “mister” by a young person, even outside positions of authority, has come to be interpreted by many as an insult.
“How dare this impudent whippersnapper deny me my identity as an actualized individual?!”
It’s a question of branding. How does Allen West want to be branded, and how much control does Allen West have over his own brand?
Allen West has a career as a political commentator and may have further ambitions towards elected office.
As a political commentator, his presumable goal is for his opinions to reach and be adopted by the largest number of people possible. He has presumably had research done which tells him if being referred to as a Lt. Col. helps or hurts to achieve that goal.
By contrast, your goal when referring to Allen West in conversation is, presumably, to have your opinions heard and adopted by the people you happen to be talking to. As such, you make the decision whether referring to your source as Lt. Col. will help or hurt to achieve that goal.
For some reason, this whole conversation is making me think of the David Allen Coe song, “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”
I’m 52 years old, and I still call the woman who lives next door to the house where I grew up “Mrs. <last name>”. She keeps asking me to call her <first name>, but I just can’t. In my head, her first name *is* “Mrs”.
My parents still refer to the (now dead) next-door neighbours as “aunt” and “uncle”, though they weren’t blood relations.
It’s a trick. Civilians are more likely to admit to a crime when they identify with a police officer’s humanity.
I’m going to start pretending that was my reasoning all along. Though I did specify that my students are fine to drop the title after they graduate -at 22. I’m not their superior then.
Well, there’s a difference between “call me John” and “feel free to call me John, if you prefer”.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. The missus and I led a few Sunday School groups for preschoolers and kindergartners; we were the only teachers insisting on Mr. & Mrs. (Last Name). Everyone else was, at the most formal, Miss Becky.
Despite my occasional immaturity, a four-year-old is not my peer.
Somewhat of a digression – One I don’t get is, even if you’re going with the first name bit, the automatic use by others of a shortened version of my first name. My [real] first name has two syllables – 5 letters, not particularly complex, though there is a common one syllable 4 letter variant of my name. I always introduce myself and refer to myself by the two syllable name. For most of my life I lived in southern California, and that’s how everyone referred to me. But then some years ago we moved to western New York state (with some significant dealings in Ohio). Almost everyone in New York state and in Ohio uses the one syllable shortened version of my first name, even though neither I nor my wife ever use that one syllable version to refer to me. The informality represented by that shortened version annoys me, but it seems to be too hard to force change.
Must.not.go.through.that.door………
I caught myself a few days ago complaining about being called, “ma’am,” for the first time in my life. In fairness to me, the person who was calling me ma’am was my fellow, who just had his 40th birthday. And while I am older than that, I know that most people think I look younger than that. I am sure that he was calling me ma’am because of the status difference, but really, it’s not that much of a difference in status and it is not that much of an age difference. Surely there are times when it is appropriate to complain about “ma’am,” aren’t there?