I thought you clinched it perfectly. That booming sound you heard was the thread exploding.
In that case, you drop da bomb anytime you see fit, my man! 
Well my experience suggests that the number of idiots and fools doesn’t decrease with age. Age per se is no indication of anything other than that you are older. I will allow that age along with a particular hobby or occupation may automatically deserve respect in the context of that activity. If I meet an 80 year old who’s been BASE jumping for the past 60 years I will certainly respect his BASE jumping wisdom, but I see no reason to afford him any more respect in general than I would anyone else who is an unknown quantity.
Based on the comments in this thread I’m going to conclude that having to call my parents ‘‘sir’’ and ‘‘ma’am’’ had nothing to do with the fact that they were tyrants.
In a way, I’m sort of grateful they did this. I still refer to older adults as ‘‘sir’’ and ‘‘ma’am.’’ One thing I’ll say about my parents, for all their faults, is that they raised me to have damn good manners.
My other descriptor was that they might be a little formal. I don’t suppose that sounds like your parents, either?
This is exactly how I feel about it, despite being raised in the South. Sir and ma’am are what you say to other people.
I mentioned in the other thread that the family I knew who did this were Christian fundamentalists. Years later, the daughter got pregnant out of wedlock by her fiancé, and the family threw her out. They were assholes.
Dang, that’s moving.
I live in the cold and impersonal Northeast and never grew up calling my parents ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’. But I would just chalk it up to regional differences. I think what does weird me out more is when a grown woman is expected to address her husband as “sir” but not earn the same respect back.
I think you misunderstood. My parents were tyrants, without question. They were scary control freaks–I had to ask permission for everything, was only allowed to sit on certain pieces of furniture, was only allowed to eat certain things from the kitchen, and often received punishments far disproportionate to the crime (try ‘‘grounded for a year from band’’ for talking back. And yes, they followed through. I did not participate in band my entire 9th grade year, due to an argument about a stapler.) My mother in particular was also very violent when I failed to meet these extraordinary expectations.
I was also required to refer to my parents as ‘‘ma’am’’ and ‘‘sir.’’ I always assumed this requirement was an extension of the aforementioned tyranny.
Given that so many people here have seen this ma’am/sir phenomenon in otherwise good parents, I am concluding that the ‘‘yes ma’am’’/’‘yes sir’’ thing is not necessarily indicative of tyranny. I had already suspected that, but reading the responses in this thread kind of sealed the deal for me.
That’s all I meant by that comment.
You mean he says “sir” to her, too ? 
I have never heard of a couple one-sided like that. Anyone who uses the terms uses them both ways. In other words the husband uses “ma’am”.
I guess you have to live in the environment to understand how it works. Fer chrissakes, people say “sir” and “ma’am” to toddlers.
But you do respect others in certain situations. I’m sure you say “Please” and “Thank you” to strangers. If someone’s arms are full, you probably move a little bit to the side to help clear their path. You even use proper grammar and spelling on the Internet. This is respect, not just avoiding disrespect. That is what “sir” and “ma’am” mean. It is a means of respect, but not so severe as to be unquestioning. It’s not the complete surrender of authority and autonomy. It’s a cultural norm that has a utility in some cultures and lost its function in others. Just because you experience culture shock over its use doesn’t mean you get to make qualitative statements on cultures that do.
Now if “sir” or “ma’am” are being used to subjugate the masses in a hellish nightmare of abuse, slavery, and goat felching, then maybe we shouldn’t use them.
Ew, that’s so creepy. Do you know a lot of couples with this dynamic? The idea of a grown person saying “sir” to her equal and not even getting it back feels so wrong. If they’re both OK with it, their thing…it definitely gives me a shudder.
I certainly don’t think they are assholes. I obviously didn’t say sir or ma’am to my parents, not speaking English with them generally, but I damn well did with all white people. My parents taught me to use the form ‘you’ with them, but here’s the thing - they used it themselves with me, too. Kids are mimics. (With Indian people, everyone is an aunty or an uncle.) But no, they don’t teach it around here.
But I absolutely disagree old people deserve respect just for being old. I’ve seen some real asshole old people in my time, and that doesn’t even count the outdated and racist and xenophobic views some of the old people in MY family have had (“You’re not a real woman until you’ve had kids.”)
You just made me sniffle a little. My mom died on the 25th of April, and you reminded me of how, though in my culture only women are supposed to say ‘sir’ to the husbands my dad always, always referred to his wife as ‘my queen’ or with affection, ‘ma’am’ (in Hindi of course).
ETA: One more thing - my parents taught me never to answer ‘What?’ when called. And it is rude, and I hate it to this day, andkind of wish my SO wouldn’t do it either. I always say, “Yes?”
I grew up saying Sir & Ma’am, but I think there is a bit of a disconnect for some folks here. As was pointed out upthread, most people who use the two terms primarily use them immediately after the words “yes” & “no”. I’ve done it all my life, but I wouldn’t call my father “Sir” as if it was his name. I’m sure some people do, though.
Our children call us Mamma & Dad(dy), but their responses to our questions are “Yes Sir” and “No Ma’am”.
Perhaps I misunderstood the OP. Just to be clear, we used ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ as described above: ‘Yes, sir’, ‘Please, ma’am’, and so on. I did not use those words as if they were names.
Getting old is easy: I’ve been doing it all my life. What’s very hard is getting young again.
A thread in GQ is what prompted my OP:
Q: When did fathers stop being commonly called “sir”? Are there still areas where this is practiced? When the father is called “sir”, what is the mother called?
When I read that, I thought of the way we use “sir”, just as many have mentioned here, in answer: “Yes, sir”.
But here are some of the answers that question got:
A: You see it some here in the South. I always automatically think those parents are assholes. They call their mothers “ma’am”, of course.
A: Usually, parents who insist on being called sir and ma’am when a child is talking to them ARE assholes.
A: I’ve never heard a child call his or her parents “sir” or “ma’am.” <snip> I’d probably just assume any parents who make their children do that are assholes. That would probably be an unfair prejudice, but I’ve got no experience with it so it’d be alien to me.
None of those posters asked about context, or whether the OP meant substituting the word “sir” for the parent’s name (which BTW I have never, ever heard of), or anything like that. Hence my bewilderment. I think there may be a disconnect here but I’m not sure what it is. I started this poll to find out if, in my efforts to raise polite children, I have labeled myself an asshole.
You said it better than I could. I love and admire my father very much, and sometimes I call him “Sir” as a way of expressing that. I also call him “Dad”, “Papa”, and “Daddy” (for some reason that last one usually loudly and in public, before I realize where I am). I will call him “Sir” when I am asking him a question or discussing something with him that I think merits acknowledgement of his age and wisdom. It’s always done with great affection and respect. He would never force me to call him anything in particular, and was tolerant of my brother in his “call parents by their first name” phase, and his even more annoying “Ma” and “Pa” phase. I don’t think it’s possible to make any determination about a parent-child relationship from just overhearing what the child calls the parent.
But the “c” word is bandied about frequently, from what I gather.
I went through a phase in elementary school where I called my dad “sir”. I have no idea where I got it, as my dad, who probably spent more time in college trying to bring down the establishment, man, than he did in a classroom, certainly never required it of me. We’re not Southerners, and we’re about as far away from being a military family as you can get. (My dad was, in fact, a conscientious objector during Vietnam.) IIRC, he thought it was pretty funny.
So, no, I wouldn’t assume the parents were assholes. They could just have weird kids.
I wouldn’t think “those parents are assholes” I’d think “hey those parents are stuck in the 50’s”.