A Matter of Honour
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 26, 2014

Socialising with the school fraternity is a test of my people skills. As our five-person family veers into the car park overlooking the oval, I can see Sunday night’s Year 8 barbeque is already a mash of teenagers and parents. My 13-year-old wrenches open the back door and gallops away on his giraffe-legs, fearing someone might link him to the mutant herd who just pulled up in the ute. I watch as he camouflages himself amongst a clump of boys grazing from an enormous bowl of chips.

My children’s father bails on me next. He calls over his shoulder as he peels off towards the playground: “You go mingle, Blossom – I’ll give the two small ones a run around before it gets dark!” I heave the picnic basket and a blanket thatched with grass clippings over the tailgate. Schlepping them up the embankment towards the pavilion, I scan the throng for a friendly face.

I recognise my son’s housemaster bearing down on me, his beefy arms toting towers of plastic cups. We’ve met just the once, a brief handshake, amid the melee of new parents at the start of the school year. As he strides towards me, I wonder if I should stop and say hello, or spare the poor man the ignominy of trying to remember whose mother I am. We make eye contact and he nods at me politely. My mouth drops open to greet him, and I squeak like a skittish schoolgirl: “Oh hi Mr Smales!”

He cocks his left eyebrow as he barrels past. I cringe. Mr Smales? What was I thinking? Since when does a mature woman call a grown man Mr? I squirm with embarrassment.

Later, under cover of darkness and emboldened by the sugar hit from my second wedge of pavlova, I recount my faux pas to a seasoned high school mum. “What’s the protocol for parents addressing teachers these days?” I ask.

“First name basis, always” she says matter-of-factly, then titters. “Geez, you are funny! I haven’t called anyone Mr since I was sixteen! How he’d take it?”

“I dunno,” I said. ”But I feel like a halfwit!”

In the 80’s, when I grew up, it was unthinkable to address my friends’ parents as anything but Mr and Mrs Clarke, or Dr and Mrs Potter. The title was proof of the insurmountable distance between us. Such formalities bred respect. Dr Potter and his lofty moniker guaranteed we teenagers were too scared to sample the Dunhill Reds he kept stashed in his office. We nicked our mothers’ Virginia Slims instead.

As a schoolgirl, a teacher’s Christian name was prized information. Huddled in the library, we’d marvel at the chain of events that led Lizzie’s mum, Mrs House, to tell Wendy’s mum, Mrs Downs, who told Wendy, who earned celebrity status by revealing that the ‘real’ name of our favourite Human Biology teacher, Mrs Fisher, was Topsy. Yes! Topsy! Breathlessly we’d whisper “Guess what!” up and down the Year 9 corridor until we converged on Mrs Fisher’s class that afternoon. Our frog dissections were well under way when the smart-alice, back row, stuck up her hand. “Mrs Fisher – is it true your real name is Topsy?” she asked. We froze, scalpels in mid-air. “Don’t you wish you’d married Mr Turvey?!” It was a lame joke, but by now, we girls were hysterical. Mrs Fisher, bless her, was grinning too.

I would do a double-take if anyone called me Ms Thomas. My children’s friends all call me Ros. Or often, Ross (“How come your mum has a man’s name?”)

It infuriates me when tele-marketers from Mumbai call the house and tack a fawning ‘Well Ms Thomas…’ onto the front of their every sentence, presuming their sycophantic charm will persuade me to part with my money.

I try to recall the last time I used someone’s title in greeting. I interviewed Marcel Marceau eight years ago in Sydney, and was firmly instructed by his minder to address him as Monsieur Marceau throughout. I needn’t have been warned, I was already quaking with nerves. I heard later a scribe from a rival outfit had been overly chummy beginning a question with “Marcel…” His interview ended abruptly in an angry flash of white glove.

Driving home from the school barbecue, I asked teenage son if I’d goofed up by addressing his House Master as Mr?

“It depends, Mum. Did you say it in that girly sing-song voice that you get when you’re nervous?”

I was cornered.

“I might have, but if I did, at least he’ll respect me in the morning.”