Herban Sprawl

10 September 2009

Big Kitty and I were having our daily dinnertime discussion and he was chuckling about the poor French who are being advised to eschew their traditional cheek kisses. It seems the French public health people are pointing out that this could be a swine flu spreader, and old habits are dying hard. Those cheek kisses are their way of being polite, for pete’s sake!

At the same time, I read in today’s paper about the college professors who are battling the ignorance of their students when it comes to classroom decorum. I have news for them. This is something public school teachers have been grousing about for much longer, and we’re sorry it’s only just now hitting college level, but now they have a better idea of what we’re up against in trying to educate young ones.

Big Kitty and I were remarking on the demise of public civility in general. Even here, in the South where it’s more important to address some lady as Ma’am than it is to keep one’s elbows off the table, the incivility is rampant and rather disconcerting for old ladies like me. That an old duffer like Big Kitty, whose language is nearly as bad as my dearly departed father’s was, noted the lack of manners came as no surprise. He’s a bit old school when it comes to some things. Can’t get him to write his own thank you notes, but there are some issues the guy is downright picky about.

Anyway, we oldsters were cluck-clucking, as oldsters are wont to do, and the subject of cell phones came up. My big gripe is drivers who are blab-blabbing as they meander through parking lots in trucks big enough to carry the 81^st Airborne. His big gripe is people who wander aimlessly in stores, pushing a shopping cart, which then becomes as dangerous as those trucks they have in the parking lot.

If I hear “I have to take this” one more time, I might snatch somebody’s Blackberry and hurl it into the nearest water feature. No, Honey, you don’t have to take this. You can let it go to voicemail. Ain’t nobody going to have a massive breakdown if they can’t speak to you this second. The other one is sitting with someone who keeps checking that damned phone the entire time you are trying to have some civil discourse on a topic of mutual interest. I want to say, “How about you just go on and have lunch with your text buddy and I’ll just slide on out of here and run to T.J. Maxx.”

Then there are the ones who carry on conversations in the check-out line at the store. My cashier friends at my friendly Food Lion and The Fresh Market get kinda worked up about those situations, but they are too mannerly to just stop the line and wait for the person to hang up. I feel their pain, and they feel mine. The only person who doesn’t feel pain is the pain him or herself!

The college professors are insulted by the familiarity with which the young people address them. Shocking, but there it is. We are past the age where parents are mortified by their children’s poor manners. Even in the South where you are Ma’am whether you like it or not.

I have no solutions. I’m having one of those days that Holly Golightly described as the mean reds. Yapping about something I can’t do anything about is a good tension reliever, but a ten pound box of dark chocolate covered Fannie Mae caramels would be even better. (I’ve given up on Frangos. They aren’t as good as when they were made by the Marshall Field candy makers. Quality’s in the cellar where the candy kitchen ain’t no mo’.) If one of you has some good ideas about restoring civility to this country, call Barack on his Blackberry. I wonder if he interrupts meetings with “I gotta take this…”