Don’t Call Me … “M’am!”

Do we really need someone else to tell us we’re getting older? Especially when he’s so much younger?!? And he doesn’t know that some day, he’ll be where we are?!?!? Humor writer and mid-age Boomer Katie B. Goode doesn’t really mind aging; she just minds when someone points it out so blatantly by calling her ……. “M’am!”

“M’am?”

The hackles on my neck—who knew I had hackles? —sprang like knives ready to fend off all attackers.

“M’am, plastic or paper?”

My head spun to the rear, hoping there was an older woman lurking behind me who could take the hit. Really older.

No one.

I snapped back and stared at the kid for a moment, still wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. “M’am?” the bag boy repeated.

You talking to me? You talking to ME?”, I thought, mentally lifting the kid up against the store window by his collar.

“How do you plead?” the judge asks.

“Not guilty, Your Honor. He called me ‘m’am’.”

A gasp in the courtroom. The judge shakes his head in shock and pounds his gavel. “Case dismissed,” he says. And I leave the courtroom, free, but forever scarred.

M’am. Just three little letters. Innocuous. Some might even think the kid was being respectful. But we know, boomer babes, we know.

I still have nightmares about that day. Being called “m’am” was just the first barb in that briar patch of aging. That morass of lost youth. That abyss of decay. It’s the first time the world recognized I was getting old.

But not the last.

First the “m’am” appellation, then my AARP card. A.A.R.P.—(Another Ancient Retro Prune) on my big 5-0 birthday. It was the beginning of the end.

Oh, it’s not that I mind getting old. I just don’t like other people treating me like I’m old.

You notice it in how people, younger people, look at you—or don’t look at you at all. It’s more like they just look through you, like you’re not even worth taking note of. You used to be tall or short, cute or pretty or handsome. Now you’re just generic. A generic pre-geriatric Boomer. Hardly worth a glance.

Is it your imagination or all of a sudden are you not as bright, not as capable, not as fun, not as interesting? Your grown child visits you in the hospital after a minor surgery and the doctor addresses him instead of you.

Hel-lo … I’m here and I’m lucid and I’m not even drooling, doctor.

But it’s not just medical concerns. Even if we’re at the top of our games in our careers, the younger stallions look at us and know… we’re on our way down and out. Move over, granny, it’s my turn now.

And they’re right. Although we may have a few good laps left, it’s getting close to pasture time. In fact, that tall grass is looking pretty good about now. Just don’t call me m’am.