I was raised by two manner-obsessed parents and while I may have resented the litany of do's and don'ts growing up, they've left an indelible mark and for this I am immensely grateful (Merci Maman! Merci Papa!). Unfortunately, it sometimes seems to me that society in general has given up on civility. On the streets, on public transportation but also in stores and restaurants, it seems that manners are considered optional or worse yet, obsolete. I couldn't disagree more! This breakdown in civility goes far beyond 'please, 'thank you' and 'pardon me'. It manifests itself in inappropriate attire in public, frequent misunderstandings on what is expected and impoverished social interactions in general. I was therefore elated when I stumbled across a new blog dedicated to the subject: SocialPrimer.com. It's well-written, elegant and highly relevant! If you're like me and believe manners and civility are important elements of style and elegance, you'll love this blog too.
Sincerely,
The Luxe Chronicles
Sit up straight!
Alarmed at what I see around me, daily, I typed into the search engine, "Breakdown of Civility in Society". OH, perhaps I have found "My people"!
I'm getting older - not yet "older than dirt", but old enough to remember civility as taught to me by my parents and teachers, and old enough that I'm beginning to think that "someone should DO something," if civility is to be brought back . . . in large and small ways . . . if I am again to live in a civil society before I die.
LARGE WAYS:
The obscene assumption that money and power or the pursuit of them justify just about ANY behavior, no matter who gets hurt along the way.
Examples:
Not only the conduct of large oil companies, banks, investment and insurance companies, etc., but also for example, the married city councilman who, as a Board Member of CIETC, had an ongoing more than 10-year relationship with a girl from the typing pool at Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium . . . over the years, seeing to it that she got promoted until she was DIRECTOR of that agency, then inflating her salary and giving her bonuses until her take-home rivaled that of major state college coaches. (When the story first broke, one pundit quipped, "Oh, unless she's coaching football over in Iowa City, SHE'S OVERPAID!".) I'm talking Des Moines, Iowa, heart of "middle America", and noting that because of these excesses, hundreds of undereducated low-income people were denied the chance to obtain training to enable them to support their families. All the while, the "big-wigs" at the agency spent afternoons at a casino, or bought vacation homes & boats.
SMALL WAYS:
My grandmother was born in 1875, giving birth to my mother at the age of 42, making her 70 when I was born in 1945 . . . so I will grant you that I grew up steeped in "niceties" that may well have been a generation "behind the times".
DRESS:
I was taught to wear white gloves when going out - even on a downtown shopping excursion or appointment. A white glove is today so far removed from society, that it might as well have been pre-1900 when I grew up. I attended a small Episcopal girls' boarding school, where we were not allowed to come to the dining hall or go out in our large midwestern city without wearing a skirt. Indeed, when I got to college, we were required to wear skirts to all classes. Skirts today? Outside of very formal occasions, they're hard to find . . . certainly not on girls in school. Most wear jeans, and manage to look as scroungy as possible for most occasions. Twenty years ago, I took part in a training effort to put disadvantaged single mothers into computer jobs. Part of what they offered the women was a lesson on dressing for business, and an opportunity to choose from a selection of tasteful (gently used) business dresses & suits. Indeed, 40 years ago, on my first job, when I ducked in on Saturday, to the TV station where I worked, staying only long enough to put the finishing touch on a project, someone objected to the fact that I'd worn a nice pair of tailored slacks. Never mind that but for the technical crew and evening newsmen, the station wasn't staffed on weekends. I was wearing "pants" - and told "don't do it again". Today, as I drive through our downtown business district, the daytime attire of women employed in downtown offices is appalling. They shlepp around in jeans and sloppy sweatshirts. On my 31-yr-old son's first job, he was told, "shirts with collars and dress pants; tie & jacket for meetings." Today, his office wears wash pants - not jeans - and anything but a T-shirt. (And these are businesmen.)
EATING:
Someone besides myself must be cooking, because my city has 3 major grocery chains, all of them groaning with food that must be cooked. (I trust that I'm not the only one buying it.) But, with my own 3 kids grown,I'm a foster mom. And the kids who come to my house have never seen anyone COOK. And, if it's not a burger or a nugget (2 or 3 expressed revulsion that chicken comes with BONES in it)or a pizza, they've never met it before. And they have no problem at all with sitting at my table announcing "Eeuuuw . . . I don't LIKE that."
Which may explain why, when I visited a thrift store in search of stainless flatware to put in my picnic basket, I found only KNIVES. It has to be that the usual clientele of thrift stores see no need for knives! True, you might need a spoon for ice cream, canned soup or cereal, and if you pick 2 "sides" to go with your (nuggets) from KFC, you MIGHT need a fork. (But who has use for a knife?)
OTHER FORGOTTEN NICETIES:
When I was taught to make a bed as a child, I was taught to put a quilted mattress pad between the bottom sheet (which wasn't even "fitted", in my earliest recollection of making a bed) and the pristine mattress. Today, the foster kids in my home have never even seen a mattress pad. "What's that?", they ask. I found that hard to fathom, until I insisted on talking to a parent before taking a foster child's friend on an outing with us. "You can talk to my dad," the child said, adding "but he don't care". I was led in . . . and was embarrassed to find myself in a bedroom, where a disheveled man lay on a bare (and stained) mattress on the floor . . . smoking a cigaress as he watched TV. (She was right. He apparently didn't much care what stranger was taking his child where . . . or when she was bringing her back!)
Posted by: Jean | Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 20:29