Recently while crossing the Mason Dixon line en route to D.C. a thought occurred to me; where exactly do the Sirs start?  No one called me Sir in Ohio and I did not get any Sirs in D.C. or the Baltimore area either.  But D.C. is a strange place, one where the man working the cashier may have been a former lobbyist from Cleveland.  No one there is ever from there.  Tourists too come from all over the world just to marvel at the beautiful landmarks housing dysfunctional politicians.  It seems that in our capital there is no general agreement for anything, let alone speech patterns.

I did not hear any Sirs either in Williamsburg, but again Williamsburg is a home for the displaced (retirees, wine makers, colonial reenactors, and brainy college students).  Heading a little north and west I began to hear plenty of Sirs.  The thing about hearing Sir is you begin to think you should Sir too.  There is an art to this.  You do not want to over Sir anyone (“Yes Sir, Sir, we might want to go there, Sir”).  But you do not want to under Sir someone either.  I mean, if the elder person next to you calls you Sir, you should definitely Sir him back.  I tried my best to Sir accordingly, but right when I started to get the hang of it we went to West Virginia and the Sirs stopped as quickly as they had begun.