This Lady Is No Ma’am, Dear

Quite a bit of response came after my admission on air on Friday that I have murderous thoughts about anyone who calls me Ma’am.

It all came to a head when a man, about 10 years older than me, accidentally walked into my path in the grocery store. He smiled, I smiled, and he said, “Sorry Ma’am”. He’s lucky he got out of the vegetable aisle without a thumping courtesy of a head of lettuce.

If someone younger than me calls me Ma’am, it’s just as annoying but they tend to get a pass because, well, the young think they’ll stay that way forever and they somehow believe anyone older than them was born that way. Plus, it’s an attempt at showing respect so why quibble with the method when the intent is honourable? But when it’s somebody older it verges on the sarcastic or condescending.

One of the guys at work asked, what should he have called you? I said, nothing. He could have just said “sorry!” And every woman in the newsroom, from 25 to 50, expressed a similar frustration with being called Ma’am. No one likes it. So isn’t it time we spread the word?

My Mom had an opinion of her own on the matter. Now that she’s over 65 and her salt and pepper hair is very salty, she says people have a tendency to call her “dear” as if she’s some frail, helpless being, and it gets her back up. My Mom can still whip a wheelbarrow around the back 40 and work in the garden until the skeeters finally drive her away. She’s nobody’s “dear”. And I’m nobody’s Ma’am.