Being called "Sir"

It happens every day, but sometimes I notice it more than others. Like that time when I bought my Friday treat.When I used to work in a school, I didn't notice it at all, maybe because of the age difference between me and the pupils. Today I stopped at an open air comic books stand in an open air market and the guy there, only marginally younger than me (I am in my thirties, but not over the first half of my thirties yet), a geek of course, called me "Sir". As in "Can I help you sir?". It struck me: I am not a young man, not a kid, I am a grown up and I get called sir. Sometimes I long for the time when the owner of  La Binerie Mont-Royal called me "young man" every time I was stopping for lunch there. Anyway, the geek did help me, he was quite knowledgeable as geeks in uderpaid jobs usually are. Still, I am just as much a geek as he is, about the same age, yet I look like a sir now.