Wilbo Hates, Hates, Hates Being Called Sir

At what age did all the women Wilbo met start calling him sir? He doesn't remember college girls calling him sir during his years in undergrad at the university, all seven of them. He does remember being addressed by students as Mr. Wilbo by high school students during his brief teaching career, but he doesn't remember being called sir when he drank one or two after the final bell at the Fenton Hotel bar and pub. When did it all the sir and sirring start? When Wilbo is called sir too often, especially by a beautiful woman, he too readily translates it as, "old fart".

At first, he was humorous about it. There's so many good answers to being called sir. There's the sargent's reply from Stripes, the Bill Murray movie: "Don't call me sir. I work for a living." There's a good answer that Wilbo's father always gave. "That's my father's name". Some of my replies rarely land upon people as funny, but I'll reply, "How do you know I'm a knight?" or "How do you know I'm a gentleman?"

Wilbo was hanging out in a club on early Friday evening, and one of the young men there addressed him with a question as such: "Sir, do you know how much a lap dance costs?" It didn't bother him to be called sir by a sailor who was carrying his bimonthly military pay in his wallet. The fellow didn't call him sir more than once. Wilbo was called sir by a man who was duty bound to use the term when on duty, and it sounded good.

Wilbo doesn't mind being calling sir in greeting, but he wearies when he is called sir repeatedly over the course of a dinner. Shouldn't the bartender or waitress take the trouble to learn his name, Wilbo, and then start to call him Wilbo? Wilbo wonders if there's a rule of etiquette that one doesn't call a man sir more than once, and only upon greeting the man. After all, one says hello the first time one greets a person. One doesn't say hello each time each time the blighter shows up during a day at the office.

Wilbo does offer alternatives to calling him by his first name. He has said you can call me dude, bubba or even man. Once he was eating chorizo and eggs in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and his beautiful latina waitress called him sir five times before dessert. Wilbo asked if she could call him anything else besides sir. When she asked, "what would you prefer?", Wilbo answered quite naughtily, "could you call me papacito?" He looked that up on Google after his latina waitress broke out in laughter. Wilbo is remembering a few old sayings. One scoutmaster once told him, "You can call me anything, but just don't call me late for dinner." Wilbo remembers a line from a commercial. "You can call me Ray. You can call me Jay. But you don't have to call me Johnson". He has no idea what product was advertised with this chatter. "You can call me Wilbo, you can call me bobo, you can call me hobo, but you don't have to call me sir."

Wilbo remembers waiting tables at a four star resort in Northern Michigan. According to his training, as soon as one learned a restaurant patron's name, even from a credit card when tendered for payment at meal's end, one began to use the guest's first name. Of course that assumes one has permission to move to a first name basis. In American, moving to first name basis is common, totally green-lighted. There's cultures where one is addressed as usted a long time before one is addressed as tu.

Sir isn't a first name. No man has it on his birth certificate. And let us not forget, for any person, the sweetest sound in any language, according to Dale Carnegie, is that person's name, said correctly. Of course, we have people who wear name tags who are driven nuts when one reads the name tag, learns the name and then calls the person by the name on the tag. Of course, we have people, who work in career fields that encourage anonymity, who have chosen to represent themselves under a stage name. Thus Fran from Ohio introduced herself to Wilbo as Fantasy. The sweetest sound in any language for them isn't their first name durning working hours.

When one is called sir, Wilbo wonders, and one requests to be called Wilbo, and the person continues calling one sir, what does one do but suffer in silence? Is it worth it to lecture the person on the distinction between subject and object, and explaining that being called sir makes Wilbo feel like an object, an entity that orders food and tips in cash? Is it worth it to explain to the person that being called Wilbo makes him feel like a subject, a person who is evolving in relation to each person he meets? He remembers meeting a waitress in Texas who persisted in calling him sir long after Wilbo offered his first name. He suffered in silence. He guessed that she would call him sir even if they had married and had children together.

Wilbo dines alone frequently now. He's out of the road, pursuing his career and his business. He's never in town any longer than it takes to make one or two friends. He is not Mr. Popularity, alas. He remembers eating dinners at so many places where people got to know him. It's nice to sit down at the bar and the bartender has already poured his glass of wine, Wilbo's favorite red, and the bartender calls Wilbo Wilbo, not sir. Wilbo remembers the bar sign his grandfather had hung in a back bedroom, a sign his grandmother threw out when she realized young Wilbo could read it. It advertised a locally brewed lager and it promised, "You're a stranger around here only once." The sign had been designed to hang in one of those corner beer and shot bars his grandfather frequented before giving up drinking cold turkey.

Wilbo recalls a lovely bar in downtown Northville, Michigan. It featured cuisine prepared by a regionally famous chef who changed the menu daily and hung first edition duck prints in his dining room panelled in old timber. On top the bar's long expanse of varnished antique oak, the chef had a local artist paint lozenges of his favorite waitresses in the moonlight, strikingly accurate side profiles. He could easily pick out the waitresses who had posed for the paintings. Wilbo knew all of the bartenders by their first names, and they called him Wilbo from drink one. Years after his nights drinking at this chef's destination restaurant, he visited a bar across the street, and Adele the bartender called out his name and called him to her table and introduced Wilbo to her fiance. Wilbo felt a little envious of the fiance, but he was glad to be called out by name, introduced as a friend.

Wilbo recalls the movie, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Charles signs a legal document that requires him to give up the status of gentleman. Wilbo believes that Charles was expected to publish an notice in the Times of London announcing his decline from gentleman status. Did Charles enjoy not being called sir right and left as a result? Wilbo is considering taking out an ad in a newspaper if that will keep him sir-free.