exactly my point.

Of course are also several "unusual factors" take into account in my case
(a) I live in hippy Ann Arbor
(b) My kids go to a school where all teachers are addressed by their first names.
(c) My parents (and their peers) were teenagers (in the UK) in the 60s, and I (like most of my friends) was brought up to refer to most of my parents friends by their first names. It was pretty new and shocking to the previous generation then, but that was the whole point. It would just be weird to go back to last names and honorary titles.

Mr. Fred or Mr Bob, etc,,,
or Mz Carol , Dr Laurie , etc,,,,,
Is ok in my book

Now as to yes mam and no mam , yes sir , no sir , well there were MANY wooden spoons used to teach me that one !!!!
Yeppers it was beat into my head !!!
hell I even say it to my kids ( 24 and 26 )

And when I meet some body I smile , give them a firm hand shake and a kind greeting .

I agree with you, Glatt, I think the "Miss" thing is a Southern thing.

well, there seems to be quite a bit of variation here on proper . . . social intercourse.

As a young girl, I remember being taught to curtsey and made to curtsey when introduced to adult strangers.

As a sign of respect, in Papua New Guinea's pigeon, Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth is referred to as "Missus Queen". Simply "Queen" would be disrespectful.
And it leaves Prince Charles as the wonderfully titled "Number-one picaninie belongem Missus Queen".

There's a whole methodology for these things in other cultures. In the part of India my family is from originally, you get called "sister" if you're the same age, "mother" if you're a little older, and "grandmother" if you're older still.

However, if it's across class lines, you get called "mother" even if you're much younger -- the gardener, a 70somthing man, would call me "mother" when I was six years old. :3_eyes:

I appreciate a little more formal courtesy that most people seem to like. Sir, Mister, Ma'am, Ms., etc. It's so easy to encroach on other people's time, space, and attention. Maybe it helps a little to make an effort at courtesy and maintaining interpersonal boundaries.

I would certainly not persist in calling someone by a title if they requested otherwise!

Oohh. I fucking love that! that's so awesome. I love creoles and pidgins. Wonderful.

Thank you, Cloud.

:tips cap:

You don't like my signature? Which one--I just changed it. If it's the Satan's Camaro thing, that's from "Transformers." If it's the "cold and shallow" thing--well, that's me.

An anthropologist/archeologist friend of mine told me the PNG pidgin for "epiphyte". I can't remember it exactly but the literal translation was "plant that lives on the side of another plant and doesn't have roots".