| "Sir, 'Sir' is a subservient word surviving from the surly days in old Serbia, when certain serfs, too ignorant to remember their lord's names, yet too servile to blaspheme them, circumvented the situation by surrogating the subservient word, sir, by which I now belatedly address a certain senior cirroped, who correctly surmised that I was syrupy enough to say sir after every word I said, sir." |