Be forewarned. This is not a story about the 1967 British drama film starring Sidney Poitier.

Though as background, in a riveting performance, Poitier portrays Mark Thackeray, an unemployed Black American engineer who takes a teaching job in a working-class London school.

Thackeray clashes with a band of rowdy high school students. Along the way, he challenges their prejudices, navigates social barriers, and–ultimately–earns their respect with innovative teaching methods.

It’s a profound story about the challenges of educating through discrimination. In the end, we viewers feel the emotional triumph of Thackeray’s accomplishment and are treated to Lulu’s rousing rendition of the title song.

If you’ve never seen the iconic film, I recommend it. Few films are more reminiscent of the sights and sounds of the turbulent 1960s.

But what I really want to write about today is the labels we use to address one another, and how those monikers change as we age.

This morning, as I finished a thirty-five-minute set and dismounted a treadmill at the Scottsdale Community College gym, a fortyish man exercising behind me smiled and announced with kindness (not love), “Sir, you’ve dropped something.”

I glanced down to discover my Silver Sneakers membership card lying on the floor next to the treadmill. I thanked him profusely, picked up the card, then proceeded to wash down the machine with a disinfecting wipe.

This experience gave me pause. At this stage of life (my late sixties) I am most often addressed as “sir” in situations like this with strangers in public forums. Certainly not, “young man”. Because I am not that.

I am certainly no longer a “boy” either, even though I definitely identify as male (he/him) and an elderly neighbor refers to my husband Tom and me as “the boys”. (She has known Tom since he was a “boy” visiting his grandfather.)

Anyway, I suppose I am “sir” to the outside world as I approach my sixty-ninth birthday in July. Better than “Hey You!”, it’s a respectful, somewhat formal, fatherly (dare I say grandfatherly even if I am not one) acknowledgement of who I am and who I have become in my older-and-sorer-but-still-relatively-fit body.

But I hope you’ll always refer to me as “Mark”, that generally kind, friendly author and gay man who is doing his best to stay sane in this dystopian country by writing about our everyday happenings that fly under the radar.