This morning, somewhere between the salt air and the squeak of my shoes on the Ocean Beach sidewalk, I got promoted. Not by a board, not by investors, not by a headline. By a kid at a coffee shop who said, “Thank you, sir.”
It was one of those San Diego winter mornings that tricks you into thinking the year has already turned. The sky over OB was cloudy but full of life, dogs were tugging people toward the water, and I was walking with a little extra skip in my step, already rehearsing the kind of year I want 2026 to be. I caught a young guy’s eye as we passed, tossed out a simple, automatic “Happy New Year,” and he shot back, “Thank you, sir,” without missing a beat.
I kept walking, but the word stayed with me. Sir.
When did that happen? When did I stop being “hey man” or “dude” and quietly become “sir”? It’s not like there’s a ceremony. No one sits you down and says, “Congratulations, you’re now officially the older guy in the room.” One day you’re just you, feeling more or less like the same person you were at twenty‑eight, and the next day you’re being addressed like you own the place.
On paper, “sir” is harmless enough. It’s the polite default when someone doesn’t know your name. A small verbal bow of respect, a way of saying, “I see you, and I’m going to err on the side of courtesy.” But that’s not what it feels like in the moment. What it feels like is a subtle notification that the world has updated your status: you are no longer auditioning for adulthood; you’ve been cast.
The funny part is that inside, nothing sent me that memo. Internally, I still feel like the scrappy entrepreneur, still iterating, still dreaming, still making “someday” plans. The mirror and the passerby have clearly synced their calendars. My internal operating system is lagging a few versions behind.
Being called “sir” lands right in that gap between how old you feel and how old you apparently look. At first, it can sound like a judgment on aging, like someone just pointed out the gray head of hair with a single syllable. But walking through Ocean Beach this morning, I realized it can also be heard as something else entirely: a field promotion.
“Sir” doesn’t only signal age; it signals expectation. The word assumes a few things about you: that you’re responsible for something, that you’ve lived enough life to deserve a little formality, that if something went sideways on this sidewalk, you might actually step in and help. It assumes that you carry a bit of weight in the world, whether you asked for it or not.
That got me thinking: maybe the real question isn’t “When did I become a sir?” but “What kind of sir am I going to be?”
There are a few versions available. There’s the grumpy, checked‑out sir who resents every reminder that time is passing. There’s the ego‑inflated sir who takes deference as entitlement. And then there’s another version—the one that started to nudge me as I walked past Newport Avenue—the sir who wears the title lightly but takes the responsibility seriously. The one who understands that if younger people are going to hand you that kind of respect by default, the least you can do is grow into it.
Being called “sir” in a beach town is its own kind of irony. OB has always carried a streak of permanent adolescence—surfboards, tattoos, vans with more stories than miles left. To be knighted “sir” in that environment is almost comical. Yet maybe that’s the point. The setting makes the contrast clearer. You’re not 22 anymore, and that’s not a loss; it’s an invitation.
An invitation to be the person who cheers the younger ones on instead of competing with them. The person who picks up the check once in a while because you remember when that mattered to you. The person who has the patience to listen, the courage to speak honestly, and the humility to admit you’re still figuring it out too.
So, yes, this morning I was “sir” on the sidewalk. For a few steps, it made me feel older than I wanted to feel. Then, as the sun came up over the Point Loma hills, it started to feel different. Less like an insult, more like a quiet promotion I had been slowly earning one decision, one risk, one scar at a time.
If that’s what “sir” means now—a reminder that people are looking up a little when they look at you—then maybe the right response isn’t to flinch from it. Maybe the right response is to smile, say “You’re welcome,” and get on with the work of becoming the kind of man that word deserves.
Because ready or not, somewhere between yesterday and today, the world decided: you’re not just in the story anymore. You’re one of the adults in the room. And on an Ocean Beach morning, with a new year rolling in on the tide, that feels like a pretty good place to start.
