"M'am"

Do you remember the first time someone called you ‘m’am’?  I think I was somewhere in my thirties and I recall thinking – well, that ‘miss’ phase is definitely behind me now.   It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  But you have to understand that back then I had one of those faces where people always thought I was much younger than I was.  Folks thought I was in junior high when in high school and in high school when in college.  One time in my late twenties I ran to the movie theatre to buy tickets for the nighttime show and the kid at the booth actually carded me because it was rated R.  Seriously. 

And now I look around me and think everyone looks so much younger than they are.  And folks don’t usually use ‘m’am’ anymore.   We’ve lost a lot of the generational respect that we used to have.  I still call ladies ‘m’am’ and men ‘sir’ when they are much older than me.  I get smiles all the way around. 

But lately I’ve been thinking that ‘m’am’ might actually just be code for this stage of life.  You know what I mean:  Middle-Aged Memory.   MAM.    You are mid-sentence and suddenly you forget where you were going with what you had just said….you pause….and pause….and then you realize with utter horror that you really can’t recall where you were headed conversationally.    You try to laugh it off and say if it’s important it will come back.  But it does not.  

You walk into a room and you can’t remember why you wanted to come into this room.  You walk back to where you were before and retrace your steps.  But this old trick does not work anymore.   You notice that your mug of tea is on the counter over there.   Gone cold.  Forgot you made it.    Then you spy the post-it note you left by the phone with questions to ask when a call came through.  Too bad you answered the phone in the other room. 

You make a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  You have the milk in your hand and open the cupboard door where the bowls are kept and as your hand approaches the shelf you realize….this is not right.   The milk is headed for the fridge, really.  And why can we suddenly remember events with utter clarity from decades ago but couldn’t remember that neighbor’s name if lives depended upon it?

Does MAM exist because we have so many decades of knowledge and experience crammed into our brains that something has to give? Is our little memory librarian surrounded with tomes of our acquired facts, thoughts, and life time events?  And in sheer desperation, and quite at random, tossing out some volumes to make room?  

If you haven’t received your first ‘m’am’ then by all means enjoy the years beforehand.  But once you do, be on the lookout for the start of MAM.  A phase of life where you might want to start carrying around a bag of breadcrumbs…just in case.