Who is Miss Sally?

Miss Sally is my wife. But you already knew that. What many of you have asked me is why I call Miss Sally, "Miss Sally." To make this easier, I’ll call Miss Sally, Sally.

Years and years ago, Sally and I lived together in Columbus. I was working for a local shipyard as a merchant marine and Sally was working at a pre-school as a teacher. Sally was the lead teacher in a room full of four year olds. At the pre-school, all the children called their teachers by their first name, but with a Miss in front of it. Miss Carrie. Miss Vickie. Miss Sally. But that wasn’t enough for me to start calling her that name. I never got to hear her called Miss Sally, so I really didn’t even know about it.

One day, Sally came home with a funny story about how a little boy came up to her in the middle of the day and blurted out, “Miss Sally! I pooped my pants!” The way she said it was hilarious. I immediately repeated it back to her and we laughed and laughed.

This story would be very boring if you could not hear the inflection of the words. Luckily, we have the internet and youtube so that you can hear how I heard it and how I repeated it back to her:



We spent the evening yelling back and forth from different rooms of the apartment, something like this:

Me- “Miss Sally!”
Sally – “Yes?”
Me- “I pooped my pants!”

The next day we were doing laundry and we said:

Me- “Miss Sally!”
Sally- “Yes?”
Me- “Is this dry clean only?”
Sally-“No.”
Me- “I pooped my pants!”

This continued on ad nauseam in several various and sundry iterations. The only thing that remained constant was that I would call Sally, “Miss Sally.”

At some point, it stuck. I can’t put my finger on the time or date, but I remember Loy making fun of me for it one day and then referring to her as Miss Sally the next without missing a beat. Friends and family sometimes slip and say "Miss Sally" and don’t bat an eye.

I hope that helps with all your questions.

“Miss Sally! I pooped my pants!”

That never gets old. But the boy did. He would be about seventeen years old now and will never know that he lives in infamy.