Unfortunately, the twenty-first century has seen the demise of many worthy things: cultural literacy, equal access to health care, real movie stars (like Katharine Hepburn and Liz Taylor), and, most gut-wrenching of all, good manners. I say, dear reader, that the demise of social propriety is most gut-wrenching of all because it represents—with even more chilling accuracy than Ke$ha’s record sales, global warming, and the existence of Rush Limbaugh—the corruption, and subsequent deterioration, of society as we know it.
Too dramatic? Perhaps. But I maintain that proper etiquette is more than just behaving one’s self in public; it symbolizes an awareness for the necessity of maintaining a widely-accepted doctrine of human interaction. I say “necessity” because this set of social norms is a prerequisite for the very definition of humanity. Lions snatch up the prey that their cheetah neighbors have caught without so much as a “thank you”. Male leopards mate with their female counterparts without any sort of proper introductions or courtship. Manners don’t exist in the wild. And if we continue to allow our manners to fall by the wayside, well, the biggest, strongest members of our species may rise up to bully the rest of us, and all our intellectual advancements will be rendered powerless against a Darwinian uprising of nature, red in tooth and claw.
Still too dramatic? If you will, dear friends, attend The Tale of the Christmas Ham. I ventured into the grocery store today to purchase a ham for Christmas dinner, among a few other items. Naturally, the grocery store was filled to the brim with people preparing for their own Christmas dinners, and tensions were running high. I elected to use the self-checkout (as a side note, I believe this self-checkout concept is both a blessing and a curse, since it allows us to avoid rude cashiers, but represents a problematic devaluing of human interaction). Upon ringing up my ham, I decided that $42.75 was far too much to pay for a hunk of meat that would summarily be devoured and excreted into oblivion, and that I could find a better deal elsewhere. In the extra minute-and-a-half it took to void the purchase of the ham, I neglected to instantaneously remove my basket from the scanner, an offense that the gentleman who was waiting for my self-checkout kiosk deemed to be a truly damnable offense. When I did remove the basket to make way for our impatient friend in line behind me, he snarled “Thanks”. Surprised by his apparent agitation, I said, politely, “Sorry about that, sir”, wondering whether the ham delay had taken longer than I thought, to which he replied, passive-aggressively, “That’s all right”, and proceeded to scan his own items with not-so-subtle vitriol.
Conditioned as I am to such low-level impropriety from perfect strangers, I would not have even registered this incident had it not been for the previous day’s tale, the Tale of the Mall Parking Lot Duel. Against my better judgment, I sought parking in our suburban town’s mall parking lot yesterday (a mere three days before Christmas, mind you). After ten nail-biting minutes of circulating the parking lot, praying that the aggressive drivers around me wouldn’t T-bone my car just to take me out of the running, I finally located an SUV (large, fuel-inefficient SUV’s are standard fare in my town) in the process of vacating a space. I instantly flashed my turn signal, excited to finally end my dangerous quest. I spotted a Mercedes convertible hovering nearby, and wondered if the driver was planning to duel me for the parking spot. Since I deemed a parking spot to be a ridiculous thing to duel over (a parking spot not being, say, a family member’s honor or a plot of land), I prepared to politely yield the spot to the other person in case she was truly intent on taking it. Sure enough, once the SUV had moved on to bigger and better things, the Mercedes convertible began to viciously seize the spot, like a lioness pouncing on a wildebeest that the hyenas around her possibly had their eyes on. Having been mentally prepared for this turn of events, and consequently not invested in claiming that particular spot for my own, I remained expressionless, impassively watching and thinking about where I ought to continue my search. To my surprise, the driver of the Mercedes pulled back out of the spot, gnashing her teeth and probably cursing, drove up to my car, and rolled down her window. Curious as to what could possibly have inspired her to initiate conversation with me, I rolled down my own window and raised my eyebrows. The lady snapped, “I was following that person and waiting for her spot. I’ll just take this one that opened up down there.” And with that, she sped off in a huff before I even had the chance to say, courteously, “Well, ma’am, in that case, please, be my guest. I was unaware of your admirably diligent efforts to secure this parking space. I hope it serves you well.” Instead, I forlornly took the lust-worthy parking spot, the source of so much conflict, and wondered why people in the suburbs are so passive-aggressively rude.
Indeed, I almost prefer the outright rudeness of the city, where holding doors for others is almost unheard-of and cashiers won’t make eye contact with you even once while ringing up your groceries. At least you know where you stand with these city folk: they don’t give a damn about you, and, the sooner you’re out of their faces, the happier they are. Suburban rudeness is sneakier and more confrontational, in that people seem to go out of their way to make complete strangers uncomfortable, when the proper thing to do is to simply ignore those minor, inevitable, annoying things that may occur when people are forced to interact in public places.
I believe that it is truly too late to rectify the rudeness that is endemic to our society. Manners must be ingrained in children by their parents, and it’s obvious to me, by the way children behave nowadays in public, that manners are not on most parents’ minds. Twenty-first century people, whether they be in the wild urban jungles or in the supposedly more tame suburban oases, are returning to their primitive ways. For all our gadgets and our politics, we are not so far removed from our ancestors, those creatures who roamed the wilderness, living only by the laws of Nature. If we’re not careful, we will soon be regarded with as much respect and admiration as the humble apes, while other, more well-behaved species take our place in the world.
