"Young Man"

My friend Elaine Yaffe, in a post last month (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), railed against being called "young lady." She's on a mission, she wrote, to eliminate the word "young" from greetings to people with white hair, wrinkled faces, and drooping eye lids. "What can I do for you, young lady?" "Come right in, young lady." "Is there anything else I can get you, young lady?" You get the idea. She finds such greetings both condescending and insulting.

"I don't feel that way," I said to myself, when I read her blog. But I didn't tell her that. Instead, I suggested that the next time someone addresses her as "young lady," she should respond, "if I look like this now, what will I look like when I'm old?" But last week, when a friend and I walked into an old-fashioned kosher delicatessen and the counterman greeted me with "how are you, young man?" it bothered me. My friend and I weren't standing at the counter waiting to be served; we had been walking to the back of the restaurant in order to find a table, so there was no reason for the counterman to address me. I was so miffed that I forgot the snappy comeback I had suggested to Elaine and instead mumbled, "uh, not bad for an old man." Elaine, I apologize.

Normally the person who greets you as "young man" is not only substantially older, he is also of at least equivalent social status. A 60-year-old salesclerk at, say, Brooks Brothers, was unlikely to have addressed me, when I was 25, as "young man." He would have called me "sir." In contrast, the counterman, who appeared to be in his fifties, is not only younger than I am, he is also presumably of lower social status, so his addressing me as "young man" was doubly inappropriate. He felt that my age gave him the right to a familiarity that was unearned.

Elaine wrote that when speakers call her "young lady," they are treating old people as if they are children, as if they must be spoken to in very loud voices and very simple sentences. The assumption is that as our bodies are becoming increasingly fragile, our minds are too. There is perhaps a complementary explanation. When the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was treating me as if I were a child in terms of social status. Social status - generally defined in terms of income, occupation, and education- are all adult attributes. Children have no social status of their own, so that if I were to meet, for example, Sasha and Malia Obama, I would not address either of them as "Miss Obama." I would address them by their first names, whereas I would address their parents as "Mr. President" and "Mrs. Obama."

So when the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was ignoring our relative statuses, making them irrelevant. Perhaps Elaine is right, that the elderly are viewed as on their way to second childhood. Is that what the counterman saw in me? Or was he placing me beyond social status, to be viewed for my essential, naked self, as a man who puts on his pants one leg at a time? Alternatively, perhaps his overriding our differences in social status was a veiled expression of hostility towards someone more privileged, which he felt free to make because my age made me an nonthreatening target. Whatever the reason, I was not pleased. I'm sorry to say that I want my social status, if not acknowledged, then at least not negated.

And - here the guilty truth is forced to emerge - my displeasure was increased by the fact that my friend, although only a six or so years younger than I am, sailed past the counterman without eliciting "young man." But my friend carries himself with great panache. Perhaps I should ask him for lessons.