Ma’am’ed Again!
Aging in Fifty Shades of Gray
Picture a pleasant day. You’re tootling around at stores or the car shop. You engage with a stranger in what seems a nice, ordinary interaction.
Suddenly, a buzzsaw comes hurling your way.
You’ve just been ma’amed!
I should know to duck. It’s a word that sticks more to us as we age, and the ones that sharpen it up are boringly predictable. Ask them a question, exchange a few pleasantries.
Momentarily, all goes normally. Then they, always middle-aged and older males, shoot you a sidewise glance, not bothering to cloak it.
The tally crawls over you: Gray hair breaking through? Check. Wrinkles winning? Check. Neck turning turkey? Eww. Curves going south? Yuck.
Then it comes whirling, edging out: “Yes, Maa’aam.” They like to flatten and drag it out, let the sour ‘a’s soak in a little bit more, as in excuse me? What are you doing here, you nasty menopausal thing?
And heck, I’m not even that old. Hardly biddy/bat material at all. Yet biology has decreed: we women join nana-land at fifty.
Now, your pleasant day has just lost its air. And your hair was freshly hennaed, too. When all you were doing was going about business or even, god forbid, having a little chat. There are no boundary oversteps, and there is no begging for their baby (hypothetically, but still).
Not to mention, many of them are of the grizzled variety and far less peachy than we are.
In fairness, lots of men can ma’am aptly and politely, though as a woman-friendly suggestion, we wouldn’t mind less of them, mister.
The term can behave nicely in other milieus. The late Queen got ma’amed so respectfully, in crown and person, that everyone felt more royal.
The sweetest ma’amers that ever came my way were from a crew of twenty-something Mississippians who came to clean up an oil mess in the Bay. A group of us had put together a coffee and Danish snack for them. Their gratitude was full of soft “ma’ams” that lifted us to ladies in crinoline.
Their mamas had taught them the gentleman’s ma’am.
Young women in commercial situations fall somewhere in between. They “ma’am” more neutrally, and sure, it’s better than being addressed as “thank you, decrepit shopper,” or “need a bag, old bag?”
Occasionally, there are those who give it the old lemon twist, letting you know where you stand—and that is, unlike their dewy selves, not them.
But had I any doubts on that score, there’s still the chauvinist chump squad I can rely on to peg me, and all it takes is a calibrated ma’aming. The disdaining-dripping face completes the scene, but as grossly rude as they are, how do they somehow manage to imply that it’s us who infringe?
As in to not endure — shudder! — any female whose hormones may have drifted past their sell-by date?
The middle-agers are often the cruelest. Underscoring they are not, no way, in our irrelevant cohort, they can’t just sneer you down into the slag, or is that hag heap? Oh no, that won’t do. So be ready for a rocket “ma’am” to fling you into the next galaxy.
Another annoying kick of it is having no equivalent gender-driven insult to lob back. “Sir” is way too burnishing and seemingly magically elevates their gray hair, forgetting ours, which is faded and past-it, into pure silver allure.
Anyway, teenage boys and Marine recruits have already juiced sirring more than we ever could dream.
In short, like garlic defies vampires, a well-landed “ma’aming” wards off the pesky older woman. Watch out, dudes, it might be catching!
I’ve often hoped I could use my evil crone powers to blast some droopy jowls and jiggling beer guts their way. Ear tufts and billiard balls on top? Happy to oblige. But in my eldritch witch wisdom, I know all I have to do is wait.
