Hon? The word rattled Howard. He had never been called Hon before. He didn’t know how to respond. It took him some time to get his breakfast order straight.
“Here you are, Hon.” She put a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon strips on the table, refilled his coffee cup and said, “Enjoy.”
Howard thought about the word Hon as he ate. He wasn’t sure of its spelling. Could she have meant Hun? Of course not. He didn’t act or look like Attila, so Hun was out. Hon had to be short for Honey. Yes, that was it. But why was a food server calling him Hon?
He left a 25-percent tip on the table, paid his bill and went home. All day he thought about the implication of being called Hon. What did it mean? To get some resolution to this vexing question he fired up his computer and got on the Web.
Hon, he discovered, was an appellation, along with Luv, Dear, and Sweetheart, frequently used to address older persons in a polite and endearing way without using their given names. Other sites suggested Hon was a gentle but dismissive and impersonal way of addressing older persons.
Older persons? Those words shocked Howard. Was he really an older person? He didn’t feel old. He wondered how an older person was described. For an answer he turned to the Web again.
A few of the sites he scanned startled him by suggesting geezer was frequently used as an impolite synonym for older person.
Howard went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “Dude, you are a geezer,” he said to the ageing image staring back at him. “Deal with it.”
Saddened by the forced acceptance of this truth, Howard sat in his favorite chair and considered his condition; the food server had, by uttering one small word, metaphorically changed him into an older person then into a geezer and then transported him and his comfy little cottage from the town of Chipping Norton where he now lived to the village of Geezerville where he knew he would dwell until he died.
What a transformation! And all in one day! Then he laughed out loud and said, “At least she didn’t say, Waddaya want, ya old fart?”
The next day Howard sat at the same table in the cafe. The same server approached and with pen poised over her order pad, smiled at him and said, “What will you have, Hon?”
Howard grinned and said, “Scrambled eggs and bacon, Sweetheart.”