»Sir, or Don't call me darling

I get a shifty feeling when people call me "Sir". I admire honorifics and epithets, but none apply to me: I am neither lord nor baronet to anyone, nor am I their sire. I suspect that people calling me sir have a mild inferiority complex, or a misguided sense that they are being polite, or labor under the painful misapprehension that they need to defer to a client.
Just as on the venerable television news program "60 Minutes", which I watched assiduously as a young'un, I see a pattern. When someone being interviewed on that program started calling the reporter conducting the interview "sir", then they were hiding something. The "sir" was a verbal distraction, a sleight-of-tongue (as it were) that meant, "Oh, I'm entirely honest and without reproach".

I don't mind if someone calls me "boss" or "chief" as much, although those do have a slightly disparaging edge (perhaps I read The Catcher in the Rye too often?) I prefer that people call me by my name, and, if they do'n't know it, that they ask.

During a business transaction, the man on the other side of the handshake kept calling me "Sir", without irony or sarcasm or even a hint of inflection other than his northern New Jersey accent. I found myself wondering, Why? and after we parted company (deal intact) I was humming a song with the refrain "Don't call me darling".

Of course, this video is available from the YouTube. Bless the YouTube for its ability to fulfill the vision that Eyebeam had two decades ago: FTv, or Filler TV. This channel gives you endless two- and three-minute pieces of programming designed to fit into the awkward gaps between other programs, before leaving the apartment, perhaps even between courses. Filler TV! The Fall!! Don't Call Me Darling!!