Uh...Miss?

So yesterday, the girls and I were in the bakery section of our grocery monopoly store when I heard behind me, the voice of a young man say, "Miss? What's today's date?"

"Miss?" I thought to myself. "Miss?" Wow-wee! I whipped around to find a 17 year old boy looking at the expiration dates on some rolls.

I was in a jovial mood, and even more so now because someone in Texas had just called me, "Miss." In Texas, you're a ma'am as soon as you can speak. But I was raised in Arizona where ma'ams are decrepit old ladies. (No offense to decrepit old ladies.)

So, I'm feeling giddy. Sometimes I say too much when I'm feeling giddy. Too much, being code for: silly. O.k.--stupid.

So I smile and say, "It's the 30th. Right, Fifi? Friday is the 1st? Yes. Today is the 30th."

And he said thanks, and we all went back to our business.

Until...

Until, in my giddiness, I turned back around, stepped toward him and said something like, "I feel like I should pay you money for calling me, "Miss," instead of "Ma'am," because no one has called me that in, like, 15 years!"

Yes, I said, "...like..." as in "like, fer sure." *sigh*

To this friendly gesture I got a combination response:

Crickets chirping, and the dreaded deer-in-the-headlights stare.

So, I turned back around and went about my business.

Unfortunately, I wasn't alone, and so my weird moment wasn't going to die in anonymity that quickly.

Fifi asked me what I said. I pretended it was nothing. She hemmed and hawed. I said it didn't matter. She went quiet and looked uncomfortable, and I knew I had done it. I had mortified my children.

I put my arm around them as we began to walk and told them I was sorry that I embarrassed them. And then Fifi chimed in, "Well, no. I think he thought that you were correcting him."

So then I was embarrassed for my kids, and sad that I had maybe embarrassed some stranger. I left Fifi and Dumpling in the Hallmark aisle to look up a birthday card for a friend and took Cuddlebug over to the produce. As I walked the aisle, I replayed the conversation in my head, and stopped on a dime when I realized a more probable truth.

That kid wasn't talking to me at all. He was addressing Fifi.

And then I laughed out loud at the thought of his real reaction--the one he was too polite to give voice to--when all that hope for what was on the other side of those long, beautiful brown locks atop a thin, healthy figure was crushed by the reality of my wrinkled, blotchy complexion accepting a compliment that wasn't meant for me!

Oh ho ho ho...it does make me laugh. Until I cackle. Unto a good cry.