Miss vs. M'am

I'm walking around Stop & Shop and I can't find the honey. I find a man who works there and he looks at me and says, "Can I help you, m'am?" The last word of this sentence gives me a bit of a jolt. I take a second to recover and ask the nice man if he could please tell me where they keep the honey. Later, while I'm leaving the store a random employee says "Have a good night, m'am" I wouldn't have even thought he was talking to me, except there was literally no one around because I was there late in the evening. I look, and sure enough he's focused on me so I say "Thanks, you too!"

My question is, do I look like a m'am? I always thought of m'am as being much older. No offense to those older, but i consider a m'am to have gray hair. I know they are just trying to be polite, but I would rather they address me as 'miss'; it's equally polite and doesn't make me feel like I forgot my oxygen tank at home.

I'll never forget once when I was working at Jordan's Furniture and there was a young mom with three little ones running around 'Bourbon Street' as I was watching from the 'Streetcar' where we served ice cream. Business was slow I guess because I noticed she dropped something out of her bag and so I yelled, "Excuse me Miss! You dropped something!" She came over to me so thankful afterward. Not because I noticed she dropped something, but because I called her Miss, and not m'am. Naturally I thought she was crazy, because I was around 16 or 17 so this had no matter to me. However, the encounter did stick with me, and I still think about her when someone calls me 'm'am'...

Let's face it, I'm almost 30 and I'm feeling old. I'm not as bad as some people I know my age (Ahem, Patrick!!), however, it's starting to get on my nerves. I am actually getting a little nervous about when my first gray hair will show up. Not that it matters because I like to change the color of my hair often enough that I am not even sure what the original color is.

Another problem, last weekend I started dancing in my house to a song on the radio. I asked Steve if he was glad I didn't still go clubbing, and he said 'yes' and I realized I was probably never going to go clubbing again and have the same kind of fun that I had when I was 18. I can't go to pick up guys, or to get wasted and not care about the hangover the next day. I can't dress too skanky because I have 'morals' now and a fiance who would get really mad at me. And worst of all, the cherry on top, I really don't even want to go and worry about parking, creepy pervs, and staying up too late and sleeping the whole next day away.

Ugh!! I'm old!!!! It's just the beginning of the end folks... ;-)