I Adopted “Sir” And “Ma’am” Into My Vocabulary — Here’s What I Learned
Even if the Southern terms are not universal, the intent behind being kinder to strangers should be
I went to college in Georgia during four very formative years of my life. Being exposed to people who grew up and lived in the South accustomed me to a genteel and more polite culture I previously wasn’t exposed to. I grew up in New York, where everyone is notoriously rude to everyone in public. I adopted “y’all” as a more gender-inclusive version to refer to a large group of people rather than the term “you guys” that I previously used.
But there was another change. I started to call people “sir” or “ma’am” when speaking to people as a sign of respect, like a lot of people do in the South, irrespective of age. I am polite in interpersonal interactions by nature, particularly among strangers, so I adopted both terms relatively quickly and used the terms subconsciously at a certain point.
I didn’t think much of it, but one time, when I went to Atlanta to visit my college friends again, this was a hot topic of discussion. We sat on a bus to “shoot the Hooch,” which is the expression for riding a tube down the Chattahoochee River. The bus driver was giving us some directions on when we could get off the bus and…
