Ma'am-o-gram

I'm not sure exactly when it happened but I suspect it was around the same time that I embraced country music.* I started calling women "ma'am" and men "sir." And I don't understand why it pisses people off so bad. Like, pisses them off Kanye-West-at-award-shows bad. But I refuse to stop.

This post was brought on by a community question fielded by the phenomenal Heather Armstrong on Dooce.com (a blog that is so much better than mine that I almost don't want to link to it... enjoy the extra seven readers this garners you, Mrs. Armstrong). The question was: When do you think it is inappropriate to call a woman ma'am?

The answer is never as far as I am concerned.

I work in a bar and I don't know your name. I have to call you something. It's not going to be the annoying "hon," the condescending "sweetheart," or the creepy "dear."  It's going to be something that I was taught was a sign of respect and in no way a dig about your age.  Although, if you're old enough that you're insulted by it, you're old enough that you shouldn't take offense to innocuous greetings.  Besides, I haven't called the same woman "sir" three weeks in a row like my old bar partner Steve.  Now that woman was justifiably pissed.

The thing is, there are high school girls at work who are much a little bit younger than me and I call them ma'am as well. They don't care. Of course they're girls in high school so ambivalence is kind of their thing. Very few men care but everyone who does uses the exact same line: "Don't call me sir. I work for a living." Exactly, sir. If you were a hobo or a trust fund baby and didn't work for a living, I wouldn't call you that. Not to mention that phrase originated in the military as a way for the grunts to differentiate themselves from the officers. Even more reason for the sir treatment.

I'm sorry, but I don't know what else to call you. I wish I could pull off the southern mannerism of calling women "Ms." followed by their first name. I cannot. You need a little bit of a drawl for that, doesn't really work with a Boston accent.

The words "ma'am" and "sir" have been around for hundreds of years and are in jeopardy because of vanity and youth envy. You should wear the fact that people call you ma'am as a badge of honor. You should make younger women address you like a drill instructor where the first and last word that comes out of their mouths when they address you is ma'am. Ma'am, yes, Ma'am. And you should appreciate men who try to desensitize you to the word ma'am by using it about 42 times in a closing paragraph.

In short, embrace your Ma'amhood because like the polar bear, you'll miss it when it's gone.

*Yes I do listen to country music and we'll be having a long talk about this later in the week.


P.S. This is by far my favorite title I have ever come up with for anything.