Whence the Whatsis?

I don’t know what to call it, but I got it.

A deference to authority. An assumption that people in charge are older than me, or that I’m always going to feel myself mentally younger and less authoritative than those around me.

Help me out with a word for this, folks. I’ll bet it would be easier if we spoke German.

I don’t suppose this is a bad thing. It’s not obsequious deference, or a servile assumption. And it does tend to fade with familiarity. But not to the same extent; the magnitude of the fade depends person to person. And it’s not dismissive. I try to treat people with equal kindness.

And it rarely goes away completely.

It might come from my suspected position somewhere on the autism spectrum. It runs in the family – as Mortimer Brewster said of his family’s insanity, it practically gallops.

Good thing is, the longer I know people, the more of a spine I grow. Not that it’s completely floppy to begin with, as I’m known as kind of a stubborn cuss. But the stubbornness is balanced with that deference, which in all is probably a good thing.

There’s bred into me – some from the Dutch side of the family, the rest from the Mormon pioneer side of the family – a respect for other people that occasionally borders on aloofness around others. (That’s mostly where the autism spectrum thing comes in.)

Maybe this has something to do with it.

I don’t want to get rid of it, as it works well as I work with others. Just would like to know what to call it. [Begins studying German]