Can we talk?

Bad manners

      It is not just my aging imagination. I listened to one of the big wigs at the medical center talking over lunch in our office yesterday about ill-mannered people at the hospital. Bad manners are not limited to class or social standing. People with steady professional careers, wealth, and excellent education have atrocious manners, are self-centered and thoughtless, and just plain rude. Foul language is used prolifically by all. We agreed that society in general over the last few decades had "classed" down. "Well-bred" can act like "ill-bred" and get away with it.

    It's laziness and self-absorption. Why bother with self-discipline, or self-control if you can just throw a temper tantrum or swear a blue streak? Why wait your turn when you can butt in line? Why say, "Excuse me. . ." when you just blurt out your own concerns without regard for others? Why be patient or forgiving when you can blast a car horn or call someone names or humiliate them in front of others? Why wait another few seconds and hold a door open for someone with their arms full? Why inconvenience yourself to offer a bus seat to an elderly woman or a man with a cane? Why be polite to a cashier or stock clerk? Why get off your cell phone to talk with the person serving you face to face? Self importance rules the day.

    In a study done recently, the USA came in behind 49 other countries in manners amongst the young! 49 other countries do a better job of teaching please and thank you, respect for others, kindness, taking turns, sharing, and obedience to authority. Look around. Who's failing to teach children? The adults who have never practiced manners or have stopped using them, that's who! People of my generation got lazy when it came to parenting, and overindulged them on top of that.We created an uncaring, self-absorbed lot who are now raising an even more self-absorbed lot and who are now beginning to breed their own ill-behaved children.

    It's time for the pendulum to go the other way. Who will take the lead?