“No thank you, sir…”

You know you’re getting old when college students starting calling you “sir.”

So today’s the first day of classes at Berkeley, and as we’ve always done, we go out on campus to pass out gospel tracts en masse. And so I’m out there handing out these tracts, getting the usual “no, thank you’s,” cold shoulders, or even the look-at-you-in-horror-as-if-you’re-holding-a-dead-skunk-and-then-try-to-awkwardly-dodge-you-moves. Then all of a sudden I hear someone say, “No, thank you, sir.”

Wait. What? Sir? Me? Wow.

And get this, it doesn’t just happen once. A little while later, again–“No, thank you, sir.” At this point, I pretty much figure that if two different people are thinking that you’re a “sir,” then you really can’t consider yourself to be that young anymore no matter how youthful you think you are in your own head.