Genuine courtesy in a title -- Newsday.com

NEW ORLEANS

Heaven help Jason Smith if ever he slipped up and addressed an elder by her first name alone.

"Miss Denise will be with you in a second," said the South Carolina transplant to Louisiana, as a friend from New Orleans and I settled in for a slow-cooked meal at Olivier's, where Smith is employed.

Denise Augustine, a waitress in that French Quarter establishment, is old enough to be Smith's mother. "The way I was raised, they taught you to call women 'ma'am' as a sign of respect," Smith said. "She's 'Miss Denise.' Calling her Denise just doesn't seem appropriate. My grandmother, Mi-Ma, taught me that."

Years ago, some buddies of my then-12-year-old nephew - boys trained in the art of showing deference to those of a certain age - were the first people, besides, say, a salesclerk or gas station attendant, to pay me the courtesy of an honorific. "Hey. Y'all having a slumber party?" I asked that winter evening, walking in on an overnight bash my nephew was hosting.

"Yes, ma'am," the boys said, honed reflexes kicking in.

"Who y'all calling ma'am?" was my retort.

Under a force all their own, those words ran out my mouth. The boys, brought up on the same rules of etiquette as I was, stared at me blankly and got on with the business of partying. In the South, people of a certain mindset - without respect to class or skin color - consider an exchanged courtesy the sign of good home-training. But at 29, I, child of the South, saw myself that winter evening as way too young, too hip, too hot to be anybody's ma'am.

I had just returned to Little Rock after only a few months of a new life on Long Island, where I was trying to find my way socially and, as a professional, covering Islip Town Hall, where politicians and civil servants newly introduced to me tended to shake my hand, then kiss me on the cheek, a sexist slight and intrusion, if the kisser was male and just plain presumptuous if the kisser was female. As pleasant as most Southerners are groomed to be - even when we are faking these often force-fed pleasantries - few among us make that sort of assumption. Few of us would kiss a stranger's cheek, be that phony.

If that invasion of personal space, that taking of liberties, didn't sufficiently twist the order of things as I knew them, my spanking new acquaintances, politicians and civil servants alike, immediately began calling me by my first name.

Before long, I became acclimated to the local nomenclature. Soon enough, I'd dispensed with the habit of referring to almost every new acquaintance as Miss, Ms., Mister or Missus, and began reserving that courtesy for people either several decades my senior or several steps lower on the economic ladder. In their presence, I feared coming off as officious or patronizing or lording my perceived, arguable status over them. No reporter worth her salt wants a source to crawl inside a hole.

Witnessing Jason Smith's good home-training on display inside Olivier's the other night - and hearing thirtysomething owners of the New Orleans bed-and-breakfast where I am a guest call their housekeeper Miss Jackie - have taken me back.

Demarcations between the formal and familiar are useful. These separations have their place now, just as they did previously. Miss, Missus, Ms., Mister or Ma'am, in conjunction with someone's name, is not necessarily a case of one person rating below or above another. It is an acknowledgment that we cannot know each other until we devote ourselves to that work. And that, maybe, just maybe, the 3-year-old daughter of one of my friends and another friend's 15-year-old has neither the right nor my permission to address me, with my middle-aged self, by my first name.

Because his parents and I were fed the same milk, my preschooler godchild knows to call me Auntie Katti. Alexandra and Christina, daughters of two dear friends, call me Miss Katti and say "thank you" every time I press a dollar bill into their hands just because they are beautiful, funny little girls.

Every new acquaintance I've made on this trip to Louisiana to attend a family gathering, to write and to play has attached an honorific to my name. Depending on the gap between my age and theirs, they might have dropped that formality but made that shift after something in our exchange - a vocal inflection, a smile, a claiming of common geography - opened the door a bit wider. These are not old-time, Old World ways. They are not throwbacks, but golden lessons that still have a place.

Katti Gray's e-mail address is katti@kattigray.com.