The Feeling of Being Called, “Ma’am”
We win some, we lose some. But boomer humor writer Jane Smith wins more than she loses. Especially when someone calls her “Ma’am!”
Jane Smith
I was in the country store in Vermont that I had bought to escape my dearly-beloved but fabulously expensive Boston. The kid was a driver for the Pepsi supplier, so I was going to be seeing him over and over, for a long time.
He was nineteen, hoping to live to twenty-one, but he called me “ma’am” and his longevity became questionable. I told him I would give him a big tip to never call me ma’am again and he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought at your age, you would want….”
Beats me how that sentence ended up. I stopped listening immediately. I was only 45, in top condition. Even at the end of a hard day when my heart and liver had sunk into my sneakers, I only looked 32, maybe 30 with a hangover. How could I be a “ma’am,” or “at your age?” What is this crap?!?
I should mention, the kid was cute. My female staff got all squishy whenever his Pepsi truck rolled up. He had good hair. Thick, curly, long over his ears and neck. Yum. The only trouble was, he was surly. But because I was 45 and not 25, it occurred to me that he might be uptight, rather than just surly. After all, it was a high estrogen stop, our store. All the staff were female, sometimes excessively so.
So I called to the kid and asked him to come over because I had something to ask him. He looked like someone had just shoved a double-barreled shotgun up his rectum but dutifully he came; after all, I was the owner of the store.
I said to him, “Can I have your hair?”
Never mind the staff going into fits at my nerve or at the kid’s brilliant blush: he dissolved on the spot. He was mine. He tried not to but he could not help but grin; most likely he always wondered if he had good hair. Now he knew for sure. He would have laughed if he had been older but as he wasn’t, he kind of snorted and shuffled. I told him he had beautiful hair.
It’s more certain than gravity that the other bitches in the store would have died to have the attention that he now gave to me. Too bad for you, I thought nastily as I flirted with the youngster. He left, still grinning, and never called me “ma’am” again. He was never surly either; we seemed to be his favorite stop, and…he always asked for me. Hah!
Dig this: maturity has its benefits. At 25, I would have shuffled and mumbled and whispered to some other broad, “Oh is he looking at me?” but would never have had the nerve to talk to him. I would have believed his surly act. At 45, I knew better.
Did better, too, Hah, again!
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Category: Baby Boomer Culture, Jane Smith
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Fabulous!
When I was in my late forties, looking every day of fifty-five, I bought some beer at a convenience store and the checker, who didn’t seem old enough to sell it to me, asked if I had some i.d. for the liquor.
I slowly passed my hand in front of her eyes and asked, “Can you see me at all?”
WOW! You are sooo cool. As an adult woman age 45 you had the ability to speak up to a 19 year old child. Amazing. Doesn’t matter how young you think you looked, at 19 kids think anybody over 30 are dinosaurs. And, whether or not you want to admit it, at 45 you were positively prehistoric to a teenager. Be fit, be active, be healthy … but be your age. Unfortunately this obsession with always trying to be younger than you are is why younger people think boomers are a joke.
I am in my 60′s. I recently purchased a 12 pack at Wal~mart. The 20 something clerk, standing beside a sign that read “If you are under 40 you must show ID” – demanded my ID.
I told her that if my wife wasn’t standing beside me – I ask her to marry me. That was the nicest compliment I’ve had in years!
I still remember the first time anyone ever called me “Maam”. I said to the young man, “do I look that old to you?” and he replied, “would your prefer I call you “Miss”. LOL
He was from the south where calling people maam or miss is normal; I wasn’t and it still seems strange to me – either way.