Skip to main content

Ma'am

In case you haven't noticed yet, I prefer talking informally. If people IM me at work, I usually greet them then follow it up with, "what's up?" There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one is that I think there's more character to it. There's more soul in slang, if you will. In fact, one of my very first blog posts was about this very topic. It just doesn't sound the same to use twelve five-dollar words when you can use five normal ones.

In particular, somewhere along the line, I decided that I like the usage of "yes ma'am" and "yes sir." I don't know if I read it or heard it first, but the idea that you'd show respect in a such charmingly simple way struck a chord with me. Of course, it's always something that's portrayed as a country manners type thing. But it sounds right to me, so I use it. It's precisely why I say that normal, every-day conversation has more soul to it; there's a sense of humanity in that manner of speaking. It's not just the "please" and "thank you" that's automatically drilled into kids when they're young. It has undertones of actually showing respect to the person to which you're speaking.

Like I said, I do this at work. It's just how I talk. However, this can lead to some very interesting interactions:

  • Typos can suddenly get very, very interesting
    I will type "yes ma'am" in IMs when conversing with people. However, I'm fallible, and I screw up sometimes. This means that once in a blue moon, I will type "yes ma'ma" instead of "yes ma'am" and hit the Enter key before I catch my mistake (stupid muscle memory). Um, yeah. Luckily this happened while I was talking to a friend, but the ensuing laughter was ... quite hearty. Suffice it to say that I am now much more careful about typing that particular phrase.
  • If I'm distracted, bad things happen
    I once used "yes ma'am" instead of "yes sir" out loud. It was pretty awkward. I don't even remember what I was thinking or why I switched them, but I inadvertently emasculated someone. I caught my mistake immediately and apologized profusely, but the new guy in the cube over overheard some of it and started cracking up. Maybe it was a real-life version of what xkcd called Qwertial Aphasia (long story short, you sometimes type a word you didn't mean to type), or maybe I was thinking ahead to the next task I had to complete. Either way, there was much laughter at my expense.
  • People sometimes decide to turn the tables on me
    I don't quite remember the conversation, but I do remember that I was speaking with a female manager about some task I had to complete. At some point in the conversation, I replied with, "yes ma'am" out of sheer habit. We weren't speaking face to face, so I couldn't tell if she made a face or not. However, she replied with, "thank you, sir." Huh. That's never happened before. Sure, I hear it all the time in retail or what not, but that's because those folks HAVE to say that. They get in trouble if they don't use "sir" or "ma'am." This lady, however, retaliated with a "sir." I'm still at the point where it sounds weird to me when people call me "sir" outside of those retail situations, so this made to stop for about half a beat. Um ... well played.
  So yeah, this whole usage of "ma'am" has led to some fairly interesting side effects. All in all, though, I still like it. I'm just going to take my chances and keep using it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...