Yes ma'am.

Today was another part of the Library's
"Catch the Reading Bug" program and the Oklahoma Science Museum came to teach us about real bugs. The college boys who did the presentation did a great job and everyone learned something. But then Something happened and my self-perception will never be the same.

OK, I know there comes a time in every woman's life when this happens. Sometimes it is funny, and sometimes it is just heartrending. Sometimes you are impressed with the manners of today's kids and sometimes you want to ask them what the big idea is. The fact is--and I'm sort of cringing--someone called me ma'am today. It wasn't a little kid. It wasn't an old person (someone my age or older, that is). It was a college kid! I wanted to shake the guy and say, "Hey! I'm only, what, 5, 6, 8 years older than you! What's up with this?" But I was holding the baby and couldn't do that. So I just stared at him, dumbstruck. I could almost feel my eyes rolling around in my head and my tongue lolling out. With that cartoon "aah-oooooga" sound. He noticed my strange expression because he got that deer in headlights look. That "what did I do?" expression. I stammered out that no one had ever called me ma'am before. He tripped all over himself trying to tell me that it was a habit, blah blah. I told him that I understood, I was from the South. He smiled politely (probably afraid I would go into those "when I was a kid in the South" stories) and quickly busied himself doing anything that would hide him under the table.


I was so upset I did two things that are completely against my nature. I petted a giant cockroach and then I ate a meal worm. Well, it was a library program, after all.