"Pop"

Last Sunday, while my brother and I were standing on a traffic island, waiting for the light to change, he turned to the boy standing next to us. The boy, who looked as if he might be about twelve, was holding the leash of a standing dog. My brother, from his considerable height, bent towards the boy and said, in a voice he reserves for children, "What kind of dog is that?" The boy answered, the light changed, and we crossed the street.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have remarked on that interchange because when my brother and I walk together, he often addresses children whom he sees on the way. The reason that it struck me was that on the previous day, as I was walking out of our building, a Fresh Direct deliveryman, a man I had never seen before, was trundling four cartons towards the building. As he approached me he called out, "Hi, Pop!" That was the second time within the past six weeks that a stranger has addressed me as "Pop."

The deliveryman felt free to address me familiarly just as my brother felt free to ask the boy what kind of dog he was walking, without prefacing his question with a polite phrase, such as "excuse me." If you were to ask strange adults for directions or to tell you the time, you would normally use such an expression in order to mitigate even that slight interference with whatever it was they were doing or thinking. In contrast, a simple assertion, such as "that's a nice dog," without any request for information, requires no mitigation because it demands no response.

Had I been twenty or even ten years younger, the deliveryman who called me "Pop" would have been unlikely to call out to me, "Hi, Mac" or "Hi, Buddy." But at this stage of my development, he viewed me in much the same way as my brother viewed the boy standing next to us on the traffic island, as a person not entitled to the deference or politeness normally accorded to strangers.

What do I have in common with the boy? For one thing, we are both physically non-threatening. A second, related characteristic is that neither of us is fully autonomous, independent, and competent. The boy is becoming so, just as I am becoming less so. I've left the workforce; my physical strength has markedly diminished, in spite of strength-training exercises - after climbing several flights of subway stairs, for example, I have to stop at the final landing until my aching thigh muscles allow me to continue walking; I've been hospitalized and visited emergency rooms more frequently in the past two years than in the previous ten; I spend much more time visiting doctors and medical labs than I used to; and I'm beginning to be dependent on others. Last weekend, for example, when I was unable to open a high kitchen window which must be reached over an unusually deep counter, I had to ask my brother, who was visiting us, to lift it for me. Unlike the boy that my brother addressed, however, I will probably become more dependent as I age further.

My wife pointed out a third feature that I may share with children - a quality that elicits a friendly response. When I encountered the deliveryman, I was wearing a red and purple cap with a pompom on top and I was probably smiling with pleasure at the beauty of the morning. Perhaps the deliveryman would have said nothing at all to me had I looked like a grouch. Even so, no matter how pleasant (or ridiculous) I may have looked, he would not have called out to me had I been younger.

When did I cross that invisible threshold, one that enables complete strangers to address me as "Pop?" And why does it bug me so? After all, I've entered my 80th year. I am old, although not as old as I hope to become. I know I should take such incidents in my stride. But they rankle. When a complete stranger calls me "Pop," it hurts, since the greeting indicates that the speaker views me as a less autonomous, more dependent person than he is. He has placed me in the same category as he would a child. The truth hurts. And I don't like it one bit.