Tag: Mature

Yes, Ma’am! Yes, Sir!

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

How could this happen?!

Oh, for the love of heaven, God, and little green apples. Yet one more time, while recently reading a book with a female, first-person protagonist, I was subjected to the main character’s whining, moaning, and kvetching about being addressed as “Ma’am”. Oh, the horror of it! How could this happen? Was she really THAT old? How is it that the person speaking to her could not recognize her youth, her with-it attitude and trendy, modish clothes, hairstyle and makeup? How could they possibly address her by courteously using a term of respect?

It was one of those moments when I wished that I were not reading on my Kindle, but on a plain, old-fashioned hardback book. There is very little satisfaction in merely clicking off a Kindle. I always derived far more gratification from slapping shut the covers of an irritating book; hardbacks were even better than paperbacks. The same is true of ending an unsatisfactory conversation on a cell phone. It was a thousand times better when one could slam a receiver into a cradle on a house phone. Stabbing the end call button just doesn’t suffice. (Oops! Getting off the track here!)

Sooo… Here’s my rude and altogether honest response to the hapless heroine’s whinging: Give it up, you pathetic loser! (Well, actually, what I thought was, “Oh, for Chrissake! Grow the hell up and get over yourself, bitch.”)

Yes, times change and so do people, but the simple truth is that I have almost never heard a man complain about being called “Sir”. His own age, or the age of the person addressing him, is not even considered in his response to that title. The word is recognized as precisely what it is: an honorific. Courtesy. A term of respect. (Or, in ex-President Trump’s case, the preface to a bald-faced lie, but we probably shouldn’t even go there.)

Admittedly, I am old. I was raised in an era in which respect was not only expected, but demanded, and not just for one’s elders, but for anyone in a position of authority. As I determined early on in life, not to just protect myself from imminent peril but, cynically, to further my personal agenda, I did not actually have to feel respect for anyone in authority over me–they might very well not have earned it–but I had to behave respectfully.

Teachers, other adults, supervisors, traffic cops, whatever: Anyone in a position of power or influence had to be taken seriously and addressed respectfully, and that respect began with titles. At the very least, one spoke to such individuals using the honorifics Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms., or perhaps even Reverend, Rabbi, Your Honor, Officer, Captain, Chief… There were many such titles; “Ma’am” and “Sir” were just further extensions of respectful speech. The titles had nothing to do with the age of the individual being spoken to, but everything to do with both the power they wielded or the courtesy and esteem they should be granted.

At the opposite end of the respect spectrum lay the words used by those both older and excessively conscious of their exalted positions; words used to belittle and to put one in one’s place: the sarcastic “Young lady!” or “Young man!” The word “lady” itself had mutated from a term of respect to just a general and/or slightly rude form of address for any woman of unknown name: “Whaddya think you’re doing there, lady?!” Now, those terms did indeed often call for a response of resentment, or even antipathy. To this day, I clearly recall being addressed as “young lady” by a supervisor at the first job I ever held. That rotund old fart happened to be shaking some file folders (which he’d just had to spend his precious time hunting for because they had been carelessly misfiled) — shaking them right under my nose, as he snarled out the insulting sobriquet. I glanced at him and at the age-browned, misfiled manila folders for which I could not, patently, have been the miscreant responsible, since they’d been locked in a vault since long before my time with the company and probably even before my birth. Then I answered his snarling, “Just how did this happen, young lady?!” with a forced look of concern and a sweetly musical response of, “I’m afraid I really couldn’t say, SIR, since I didn’t work here then.”

But, returning to my primary point in this missive, it is long past time for every woman over the age of 20 to get over this ridiculous concept of, “To be called ma’am means I am old”. In the first place, there is nothing inherently wrong with aging. It happens to all of us, if we’re lucky enough to continue living, and is usually accompanied by wisdom, which is a good thing. But in the second, and far more important place, “ma’am” is an honorific, a term of courtesy, and above all, an expression of respect and regard.

Deal with it, young lady.

Enjoyed this post? Then you might also like the essay, “Pennies, Headlights, and Bubonic Plague”. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below; it was published on August 7, 2018.

The Freedom of My Years

§ What I really remember about her essay is how profoundly sorry I felt for this young woman.  She still hadn’t managed to figure out that growing older is inevitable, but growing up is optional. §

As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog (see Barbie Shoes, published November 13, 2019), for many years one of my favorite ways to waste time at the office was to read a Lifestyle section which scoured the Net for interesting personal blog posts. The essays shared there were rarely boring.  Shocking, irritating, enlightening, silly, funny or thought-provoking, but not boring. Some still stand out in my memory.

One that I remember vividly had been written by a woman who was just entering her 30s. It was directed to other females of her age group who, she felt, were failing to take seriously their sudden elevation into true “grown up” status. It was time, she chivvied, to cast off the last remnants of wild, uninhibited youth and start behaving like mature, responsible adults. To this end, she offered a great deal of advice, most of it having to do with makeup, hairstyle, and dress. (Surprisingly, she provided no suggestions about behavior, which makes one wonder if she really comprehended the concept of “mature”, but, well, shrug…).

Her first recommendation was: No Graphic Tees. It was time to give them up, she pronounced. Graphic teeshirts were for teenagers and 20-somethings, and We’re All Adults Now. Plain colors and quiet prints only, please.

Then there was eyeshadow. No colors, she directed–no muted blues or soft greens; no lilacs or lavenders, and certainly no wilder shades, no matter what one’s eye color. Ivories and sandy browns and smokey greys, only, please, with perhaps the barest hint of eyeliner. A touch of pale lip color and mascara, but not much in that department, either. Remember, We’re All Adults Here Now.

Fingernails, too, had rules: no bejeweled nails, nor longer lengths; no sparkle, no swirls, no deep, dark colors. Soft, rosy tones or a French manicure, and a single shade only; never different colors on each finger. Don’t even think about unnatural shades, such as electric blue or diamanté black! The same rules applied, of course, to pedicures: muted colors, no shimmer, one shade only.

And hair! Chop off those long locks. Get a very short, wash-and-dry style, and never, ever, choose a hair color other than the normal brown, black, or dark blonde, or, at a stretch, red.  Highlights were acceptable, but, again, only in quiet shades. Don’t even think about adding a streak of purple at Halloween, or Kelley Green at St. Patrick’s day! Adults, remember! Adults!

This “mature” blogger provided numerous other rules for the adult females of her acquaintance; these are only the ones I recall. But what I really remember about her essay is how profoundly sorry I felt for this young woman. At the minimal age of 30, she had become an old woman. She still hadn’t managed to figure out that growing older is inevitable, but growing up is optional.

At 65, retired, I no longer have to deal with office clothing. I have one dress for weddings, and one outfit for funerals. All the rest of my clothing consists of teeshirts, shorts, jeans and sweatshirts.

And every one of my teeshirts is a graphic tee. Every last living one of ‘em.

I have teeshirts from which tiger and cat faces stare out; teeshirts with funny mottos; teeshirts with cartoons. A wide-eyed kitten proclaims, “Doom Is Near!” The shirt that I wear when feeling particularly grumpy reminds me, “No Bad Days!”

During the months just before my retirement, I took to wearing glittering gold eyeshadow. I wanted some bling in my life, I explained, and eyeshadow was one way to begin. Eventually I tired of ending up with sparkles on my contact lenses, but I still occasionally break out the glitter shadow just for the hell of it   I also have a sort of muted gold dust shadow that I periodically take to wearing. I line my eyes heavily when I’m of a mind to, and I prefer rich mauve and berry shades of lip gloss that stand out and define my lips.

I rarely paint my fingernails because the paint always chips and looks awful, while the feeling of fake nails drives me nuts. But for my daughter’s wedding I wore sparkling, iridescent eggplant-color nail polish that exactly matched my gown, while my toenails shone in my sandals with glittering, besparkled bright purple polish. In fact, throughout each summer, my pedicured toes are almost always topped with glittering polish that shimmers in the sunlight.

And my hair, long for most of my adult lifetime, is long still. I wear it up in topknots and Gibson Girls, and down in braids and twists and ponytails. And every five weeks it is still dyed the very standout shade of a brand new copper penny, which brightens my ultra-pale skin.

And, yes, I sometimes even wear a red hat trimmed with a clashing purple ribbon and a sparkling purple rhinestone brooch. Because I can. Because I no longer chose to follow the “grown up” rules. Because my years have given me the joyously complete and utterly unfettered freedom to be young at heart—a freedom that the genuinely young can never experience, but may (if they are lucky) someday come to understand.

Vintage Treasure

§  I shall never, ever again refer to myself using the word old!   §

My late mother-in-law, Mary, was a world-travelling, spirituality-seeking whirlwind. She was bright, intelligent, graceful, and had a marvelous sense of humor. I absolutely adored her. The destructive evil that is Alzheimer’s robbed Mary of all these qualities, but until that happened, the woman I lovingly nicknamed “La Comtesse” was everything I wanted to be as I aged.

One of my favorite memories of Mary stems from the days when she was still a healthy woman who travelled extensively. Arriving home from a cruise, she related a story from her vacation, and to this day I recall the look on her face as she concluded the tale. At the time, Mary was on the far downhill side of 60, rapidly ziplining toward her next decade. One of her shipmates on this seniors’ cruise was a silver-haired lady, tidy, quiet and retiring, who participated in few of the ship’s activities. This quintessential little old lady, Mary remarked, observed a birthday during the cruise, and La Comtesse asked her which birthday she was celebrating.

“Oh,” the little old lady replied, “this is the big one! The big Five-Oh!”

I had cause to recall the irony of this story not long ago, when an author whose books I generally enjoy put dreaded words into the mouth of a youthful character: the young woman referred to an aged character as an “old biddy”. Judging by this youthful writer’s perspective, my beloved La Comtesse would have qualified as an “old biddy”. Yet nothing could have been further from the truth! Then, with dismay, I recalled that “old biddy” was actually the very phrase my own Grandmother used to reference those in her age group who’d stopped really interacting with life; who spent their days bemoaning their aches and pains while disparaging everything modern and recalling the past in a pink-tinted haze of inaccurate nostalgia. (Grandma, too, was a whirlwind, one who drove everywhere in her huge yacht of a car, couponed madly, fed everyone home-cooked meals no matter what the time of day or night, drove to work at an office until she could no longer shovel her car out from the snow in harsh winters, and generally had a rip-roaring good time.)

I have walked a few weary miles since the days when I was a mere teenager, sitting through a boring classroom lecture about semantics: the value of a word beyond merely its definition; the weight and worth of meaning given to it by opinion and understanding. And so as I now deal with the reality of my own aging, recalling Mary’s humorous tale of her “old” shipboard companion and my life-loving Grandmother’s behavior, while encountering demeaning phrases in books and being treated with thinly-disguised impatience by the very young, I’ve had reason to truly mull those long-ago lessons in semantics. I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s often sadly true that those in the latter half of life are treated with disrespect and contempt in modern society. And I’ve decided that some, perhaps many, of those attitudes center less around one’s personal behavior and ability than around the semantics of the word “old”.

We treat merchandise with disdain when it is merely old. To be old is to be out-moded or outdated; unfashionable. We begin to appreciate it when it becomes vintage, but it is not until it is antique that we regard it with awe and reverence. When we speak of “elder” it is with respect; i.e., “the elder statesman”. Yet to be elderly conjures up a picture of frailty and infirmity.

Old is old-fashioned; out-of-date; old is an outlook that is behind the times. Old is a pensioner, a senior, a geriatric—yet mature is a superior condition. Songs can be “oldies but goodies”; cars can be classics. Yet attitudes can be scathingly considered traditional and even archaic. Aged is a sad condition, yet historic is valued, while ancient or antiquity are regarded with wonder. Old, though is time-worn, hoary, antiquated.

With all of these words firmly in mind, each of them denoting a different semantic variation of that which is old, I’ve decided that I shall never, ever again refer to myself using the word old. I will not even disrespect myself by remarking that I am aged, or aging. The words I use to refer to myself need to be free from heavy and unintended meaning, weighting me down with subconscious consequences.

So from this point forward, I plan to be Vintage. Vintage is treasured, special, worthwhile, valued, appreciated. Vintage is desireable.

I’m not nor ever will be an old biddy. But I’m already Vintage.