Yes, I do have a chronic depressive illness. Plus, I was raised to be polite. I'm also Southern, by the way, but now living in the Pacific Northwest. It was ingrained into me, among other things, NEVER to address someone older than I am by their first name. "Unless invited to do so" was something I affixed on to it myself, later. That's how I taught my daughters to do, and it's what I still do myself. My father didn't care if the neighbor said "Call me Joe." I was still made to address him as Mr. Smith. And that applied arbitrarily. If I was 17 and the neighbor was 18, he was an adult and I wasn't, so he was still Mr. Smith, and not Joe.

My parents told me at the time that when it was my turn, I would be given the same respect.

They were wrong.

The only person who ever calls me Mrs. Brady is my husband, as a term of endearment acknowledging that I am his wife. If I'm at the doctor's office waiting to be called, and the nurse or medical assistant steps out with my chart in hand, what I'm going to hear called out is not "Mrs. Brady?" but my first name, and then it's usually mispronounced. My husband, born and raised in California, says words like "ma'am" are just passé nowadays, and nobody says them. Well, I feel like I've been lied to. Or, that life changed the rules just when it was my turn to benefit by them. It brings to mind playing tag on the playground, and right when I'm "it," all of the other kids simultaneously hear their mothers calling them for supper. Remember "Calvinball" from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip? Calvin kept changing the rules of the game any time he was about to lose, so that no matter what happened, he'd win. I feel like life is playing Calvinball with me, changing the rules so that I can't win.

Interestingly, we just got back from vacation in Honolulu. I noticed there that the traffic is crazy. It's a big, multicultural city, and I'll bet the majority of the drivers are tourists like we were, with little to no idea where they're going. We saw a high percentage of cars with UPC stickers in the back seat windows, a sure sign of it being a rental car. Therefore, being in the wrong lane and needing to get over, or making a last minute turn, happens all the time. But nobody's rude about it. What usually happens is that driver A will let driver B in, and then driver B will answer with a "hang loose" gesture that in this context is meant to say, "Thank you." It's exactly the opposite of the middle finger.

Then we're not even back home for a day, and we get that rude driver in the t-top. I think the contrast depressed me.