“Noun. A title, phrase, or grammatical form conveying respect, used especially when addressing a social superior.” The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition.
Several years ago, my then-new neighbor met my youngest granddaughter. Karen was walking her dogs and Myah, as is her wont, wanted to “pet that dog.” I introduced Karen to Myah and asked Karen how she wanted to be addressed by Myah. It has been almost two years since that meeting and Myah still calls my neighbor “Auntie Karen.” Myah had previously met another of my neighbors, a grandmother named Barbara, who gave the youngster permission to call her grandmother name, “Mimi,” which she does, still.
My father, as I have written before, was an abusive alcoholic who, not unlike the novelist Pat Conroy’s father, delivered to his family fear and pain. But one of the demands that he made of his five children was that we all use the English language properly. My sister is an award-winning writer, and I am, well — a writer. My father striped my back to teach me another thing: Putting “Mr.” or “Miss” before a person’s name was a false honorific, and that respect can best be conveyed in our behavior towards the other person.
In 1981, a writer for the Louisville Times, which was part of the Louisville Courier Journal, found me coaching T-Ball in Louisville’s Jewel Park and wrote about me. In the second paragraph of a column he labeled “Coach,” Jim Wright wrote that a player (players were between the ages of 4 and 7) cried out to me, “CJ, I got a new Snoopy coloring book!” None of the children I coached that year knew me by any other name than “CJ.” In fact, no young person who has ever known me has called me anything but CJ, including “Mimi’s” grandson, Roman.
To be fair, my father was born in the 1920s, and probably grew up in an environment where a whole group of people demanded that a “Mr.,” or “Miss” precede their first names. Another dive into my American Heritage Dictionary gives “Mister” as “(a) title of courtesy used when speaking to or of a man…” The movie “In The Heat Of The Night” had a white southern sheriff, played by Rod Steiger, asking a “boy,” played by the black adult Sidney Poitier, how he is addressed in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Poitier responds forcefully: “They call me ‘Mister’ Tibbs!”
This is not intended to be a criticism of those who ask that young people apply an honorific when addressing them (though I chafe at the idea of “social superior.”) Two of my youngest granddaughter’s favorite teachers are Miss Rolves and Mrs. Raglund. They were introduced to Myah using those titles of courtesy, and the 6-year-old never fails to use the titles, courteously. Which is as it should be.
As someone once told me about reading one of my columns, “Where is he going, here?” The answer might be, “Into a fresh future.” Many things in the new year of 2025 have been about revocation and retrogression (discuss among yourselves.) In “Cancel Culture” (Weekly View, March 18th, 2021) I wrote of my English professor’s gentle introduction to an important literary offering from the writer Flannery O’Connor. Dr. Richard Brengle told the class that the story used terms that “we find repulsive today.” I don’t contend that “Miss Daisy,” (or, Norma, whom I drove to the annual Snowball Dance in Shelbyville) should be abolished. When instructing my youngsters about how to address an adult, my respectful designations will be “Mr., Ms., or Miss” last name.
Respectfully yours, CJ.
cjon3acd@att.net