getting ma'amed and other shennanigans

I am officially old. I got ma'amed by the bag boy at the grocery store. Before today, the only people that have called me ma'am are over the phone customer service reps and southern gentleman.

Lets rewind to a few hours earlier. I had just gotten home from work, and the door bell rang. I wasn't expecting any visitors or packages, so I should have just ignored the door... but I went for it. Lo and behold, it was a door to door salesman. It was a young woman on an exchange program from Estonia peddling books. We chatted quite a while- she was impressed that I had actually heard of her home country. I knew I wasn't going to buy anything from her, but let her give me the song and dance.

Because I am a chatterbox that can't say no, I learned that she was celebrating her 21st birthday tomorrow. She wanted to experience local night life, so I tried to steer her in the right direction (keep in mind that for the past several years my idea of a good time has been appetizers, wine, and dessert at home or happy hour that is over by 6 or 7 pm). Anyways, as we were exchanging our goodbyes, she asked me if I had anything that could "boost her energy"... perplexed, I inquired "umm... like a glass of water?" She then responded sure- or a glass of coffee or something. I found her a bottle of tea and sent her on her way.

After some reflection, I thought that perhaps it was like a moment from the movie Clueless when Tai asked for some "herbal refreshment"

Tai: I could really use some sort of herbal refreshment.
Dionne: Oh, well we do lunch in ten minutes. We don't have any tea, but we have Coke and stuff.
Tai: No way. You guys got Coke here?
Dionne: Well, yeah.
Cher: Yeah, this is America.

As a total aside, Clueless is one of my favorite movies. I have watched it countless times. My grandma used to belong to the movie of the month club (wow, that really dates me) and my cousin Amanda and I tended to have creative control over what we ordered. Not one to fret about things like parental ratings, Grandma Verna happily obliged and ordered it for her tweenage granddaughters. (If you really want to hear about scandal, you should hear the story about the time she tried to buy my brother special lemonade at Pamida, but that is a story for another day).

Anyways, in the course of one evening I went from being mistaken for Nancy Botwin to being ma'amed. Oh well, I hope my Estonian pal enjoyed her tea.