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Frum, I say. No, your first name. What do you need my first name for? To write on the tag, so all the children and the staff will know what to call you. In that case, write Mr. Frum. 2 At which I am shot a look as if I had asked to be called to Duke of Plaza Toro. 3 In encouraging five-year-olds to address grownups by their first names, PlaySpace is only slightly ahead of the times. As a journalist, I faithfully report that the custom of addressing strangers formally is as dead as the practice of leaving a visiting card. 4 Theres hardly a secretary left who does not reply, when I give a message fro her boss, Ill tell him you called, David. Or a public relations agent, whether in Bangor or Bangkok, who does not begin his telephonic spiel with a cheerful Hello, David! 5 You dont have to be a journalist to collect amazing first-name stories. Place a collect call, and the operator first-names you. The teenager behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant asks a 70-year-old customer for his first name before taking his order. 6 Habitual first-names claim they are motivated by nothing worse than uncontrollably high-spirited friendliness. I dont believe it. I f I asked the fast-food order-takers to lend me $50, their friendliness would vanish in a whoosh. The PR man drops all his cheerfulness the moment he hears I wont go along with his story idea. No, its not friendliness that drives first-namers; its aggression. The PR agents who call me David uninvited would never, if they could somehow get him on the phone, address press baron Rupert Murdoch that way. The woman at the bank who called me David would never first-name the banks chairman. Like the mock-cheery staff at PlaySpace, they are engaged in a smiley-faced act of belittlement, an assertion of power disguised as good cheer. | 
