Thursday, May 17, 2018

Manners Matters

Once upon a time I was a little girl, and I wore ribbons in my hair, delighted in shoes with buckles, and twirling around with abandon to get the skirts of my dresses to flare out and make me feel like a fairy.
I delighted also in being the solemn, mature eldest child in my family, and I glommed on to words I thought made me seem older than I was. I was especially conscious of being polite. It was so pleasant to trot up to my mother after attending a birthday party and listen to the parents praise 'Jessica's exceptional manners.'
I still recall the single time I attended my best friend Becky's birthday party and I was so excited at cake time I was sitting on my knees on the bench around the table while she blew out the candles on her cake. I wiggled my body with joy and completely forgot about the polite little girl who would sit in her chair patiently. Becky's father was a little bit older than my dad, and he reminded me of a mysterious old wizard. He had an office with an abstract chess set whose pieces were all made of twisted, heavy metal, and Becky and I used to attempt to play without really knowing which shape was what. Mostly we liked the clunking noise they made on the board and against one another.
He seemed very friendly, and so when he admonished me for not sitting in my seat properly, I turned and with an uncharacteristic flare of rebellion, stuck my tongue out instead of obeying his order.

To be fair, he was a total gentleman disciplinarian. He came over and asked me very sternly to come with him to his office where he told me it was very impolite to ignore the rules when you are a guest at someone's house, he also told me that he knew I was a good little girl and that it seemed odd for me to be so disrespectful.
I burst into tears and was so upset that even when he guided me back to the table with a kindly hand on my shoulder and got me a nice big piece of cake, I could hardly swallow a mouthful.
It should tell you a lot about me to say that on some nights when I can't sleep, after I've run through every stupid thing I've ever done and every time I've ever wronged anyone, this memory rises to the surface like the bloated corpse of a long dead manatee, and I still feel a curl of guilt in my stomach like an ancient thread of steel wool.

This being said, I think the emphasis on manners in my childhood had a great deal to do with being brought up by parents of the Commonwealth, in a country still under English rule. I think it also has a great deal to do with my being a girl.

Everyone likes a polite little girl. And I really liked being liked.

Of course, when I moved to America, the politeness thing made me stand out like a sore thumb, alongside my soft Australian accent, it was the most definitive thing about me, and it quickly got me shoved out of line for the bathrooms, laughed at during class discussions, and ostracized from most playground games.

But before you go feeling bad for me, let's get to the meat of this post.
Now that I am an adult, I feel that manners make for superior humans, of all genders, races, origins, and languages.
Being polite, especially to strangers, is the first vestige of kindness.
You are polite because you may never see the person to whom you are being it ever again.
You have no idea if they are having the best day or the worst day.

I cannot tell you how many times I was walking the streets of wherever I lived struggling with my medium to well done depression, and a small gesture made me feel like maybe I wasn't a worthless piece of shit.

Working in the service industry for most of my life has led me to interact with thousands of people in microcosmic conversations, and I can tell you with confidence that I know how a please, a may I, and a heartfelt thank you can completely transform a human confrontation.

I know this from being on both sides. I have single handedly moved someone's mood from absolutely dreadful to surprisingly pleasant with a few pleases and thank yous and the honest questions, "How are you doing? You having a good day?"
I have also been flattened by a crap person, who dismisses me, treats me like a moron, and then finds something to yell at me about because they are a small human with no power in their life other than to make someone they don't know sad.
It is a really awful feeling to know that a stranger thinks of you as a throw-away-person.

Because here's the thing,
we're all both throw-away-people and lovely humans to one another.

I can be a total bitch if I want to be. I know you can too.
I can lock eyes with a stranger, look at the way they hold themselves or park their car, decide that I am better than they, and cut them in line to the deli counter just like they can to me, but it is heinously rude, and genuinely makes me feel bad.

I believe that every action we do has a kinetic energy of either positive or negative nature, and it is possible to make both yourself and another person feel like the world is worth staying in by stepping back and saying the words, "no you go ahead."

I am always amazed when people blow through crosswalks, or jostle in lines, or make a big deal about getting somewhere before someone else because it really doesn't matter. I would rather take the extra four seconds to let an old dude cross the street than get to wherever I'm going.

In these times of frightening social distance, where we feel so safe inside social media as to say absolutely awful things to absolute strangers on the internet, I see people retreat from actual person-to-person interactions more and more.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot more unabashed solicitation going on now that there ever was before.
I can't walk a block without a tall young dude asking if I have spare dollar for a bus, or an enthusiastic person in a beanie with a clipboard trying to get me to sign a petition, or a twenty something wearing nine hundred dollars' worth of make up and cologne asking if I'm happy with my pore size, mortgage interest rate, or data plan.

STILL. THESE ARE HUMANS. They deserve a respectful shake of the head and a smile, or if that doesn't put them off a, "I'm sorry, no thank you."
You don't even have to put in the I'm sorry if you don't like, but No Thank you, goes a really long way.
So does door holding.
Like, for everyone.
If you go through a door, just flick your eyes back and see if there is someone behind you, and hold it for them for the .25 of a second it takes for them to get to it.
It doesn't make you late for things.
It doesn't make the stranger think they can be your friend now, and if so, and you're not into that then say, "no thank you," and walk away, or if you're totally about new friends, then great! You have one!

Manners are the thing that evolve into kindness. They are the gestures that remind all of us that we are in this thing together.
Letting someone go ahead of you may be something you can do every day, until that one day that you really are late, and you really do need to get somewhere really soon, and YOU SHOULD STILL BE POLITE.
YES.
Because manners karma is real, and the more politeness you exhibit, the more it comes back to you.

I find people's wallets a lot.
I always have.
I find pocketbooks and purses, laptop bags and phones, and sometimes I just find money on the street.

And you can bet your sweet bippy I take the wallets and the pocketbooks and anything else to the police station.
Did you know that you can drop off someone's wallet at the library if you find a library card in it because their library account has a phone number, and the librarians can call them to return their shit?
Yes. You can do that.

I've called people and heard the relief gush from their voice when they realize that their stuff is found.
I've turned over phones and watched previously horrendous humans smile gratefully and say "Oh my god, thank you so much!"

And even if they didn't that's not the point.

The point is I know how fucking crazed I would be if I lost my phone or wallet.
I know I'd be a mess, trying to figure out how to replace all my cards, my IDs, cancel my accounts with every single goddamn thing, and then trying to remember new account numbers.

And you know what?

I've never had to do it, because whenever I've misplaced my shit, some kind human has found it and returned it.

Manners Karma, people.

Anyway.

I just wanted to impress upon you how small the planet is, how alike we are, and how it really does not hurt you to say those pleases and thank yous and to hold doors, and take a moment to turn in the phone you found in the bathroom of the coffeeshop because it is these small, every day moments, that make us all okay. They remind us that the world hasn't completely turned into a dumpster fire, and that we're all just doing our best to be human beings.

So thank you, for reading, and for that thing, you know, that thing you did for me that time.
Thanks for that.

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