Just a bit of...

The real estate agency I work for is owned by a divorced couple. I've known H for years, as she's a part of my old synagogue, and, indeed, it's how I got the job. I've only known J since I've started working for them. They get along just fine as business partners and as parents to their 26 year old daughter B. Both have remarried, and H has gotten divorced again, while J and his second wife, who is friends with H, have adopted a little boy. B should hurry up and get married and have a kid - her mom is clearly hungry to be a grandmother.

But the problem here is my reaction to B. As I said, she's 26, and very bright. She's mostly independent - more so than I was at her age. She has her own apartment that she and her roommates pay rent for, albeit in her mother's building, and she has two part time jobs, one with her mother's management company, but she does work for the money.

And in the course of her work, she has occasion to ask me to do things. And when she does, I feel sort of odd. It's the way she asks me, I think - as if I were *her* employee rather than her parents'. Her parents are unfailingly polite, saying please and thank you to me and to the agents - she is less so. And in my mind, it all focuses on my name. We're only twelve years apart, and she's a full adult and I've only known her as an adult, but something in me wants her to call me "Mrs. Baker." It's utterly irrational - I suspect that there are as many years separating me and her mother, and I call H by her first name, but when she calls me "Debbie", it feels wrong. And it's not that I enforce it - all of my friends' kids call me that. So, I'm not sure what it is.