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Are people getting ruder
or is it my imagination?
An Impeccably Polite Member of.,..
TheColumnists.com
It happened the other
night in a Toronto subway car.
A woman seated across from me took out a clipper and started
trimming her nails. The cuttings flew onto other passengers but
nobody said anything. I merely switched seats although I stewed
about the incident all night.
I’d become the latest victim of the “New Rudeness”
and I can get steamed up on the subject.
Only days before I’d watched the brilliant new CBC-TV documentarily
simply titled "Rude." I couldn’t believe civility
had deteriorated that badly until I watched it; I thought it
must be me. Now I’m hoping it gets to U.S. TV as soon as
possible. Valerie Pringle is the hostess of this glimpse backward
into the ascent of rudeness over good manners.
This documentary blames it all on the Baby Boomers, the Me Generation,
Sixties Yuppies. By any name they have fostered a cult of rudeness
on us all. I think it comes from their philosophy of instant
gratification. Their kids--now grown or growing up --re in the
habit of always taking and never giving back much.
I thought I must have seen it all after the nail clipping incident
only to look out from the taxi I was riding in a few days later.
I simply gasped. A woman was whizzing down busy Avenue Road,
which is six lanes, and fixing her makeup at the same time. Her
hands were applying the makeup as her bare feet handled the wheel.
"Pshaw!" said the taxi driver.
He said he’d recently seen a man speed
by him in a fancy car, all the while slicing and eating steak
on a tray while his knees were locked onto the steering wheel.
And then at dinner today--in one of Toronto’s fanciest dineries--I
heard every word in a screaming conversation a man had with his
lawyer. He was seated a couple of tables away, talking incessantly
on his cell phone. When I asked the waiter to intervene he said
he wouldn’t dare interfere with a customer’s meal.
But look--the guy wasn’t eating. He was shouting. And disturbing
everybody else. He was pretty rude but so was the waiter. Am
I right?
Rudeness. It’s everywhere around me. On Halloween night
a tyke refused to open his bag until I told him what I was giving
out. He’d had enough of standard Halloween fare liked wrapped
candy kisses, he told me. What could I offer that was different?
So I sent this eight-year-old dressed as a Johnny Depp pirate
out into the blackness of the night without the special Laura
Secord candies I was passing out.
Rudeness is everywhere, I’m afraid. It’s the couple
talking over the movie "Ghost Town," while I’m
trying to watch it. The usher is dispatched and even he has trouble
separating and quieting this coarse and argumentative couple.
They don’t even seem to be aware how much trouble they’re
causing.
Theatrical good manners is missing these days, I figure, because
members of the latest generation grew up watching TV in their
underwear. Stretched out on the sofa, they guzzled pop and chomped
on chips and talked and argued and occasionally looked at the
TV set. They carry with them no set of social standards and cannot
understand that people around them get distressed by such rude
behavior.
Now that they go to movies they leave trails of litter as they
grow restive and chatter and even take phone calls, finally exiting
without any regard for other people.
I thought it was crazy when I was at the theatre recently--Christopher
Plummer dazzling everyone in "Caesar And Cleopatra"--and
the manager came out and warned of repercussions if anybody kept
their sound devices on during the play. But half way through
I did indeed hear an electronic beep or two.
Life gets interrupted by cell phones everywhere I go. I’m
on a streetcar homeward bound at 6 p.m. And the number of kids
chattering away on their phones seems oppressive. I catch smatterings
of conversation: “Hi, mama, what’s for dinner?"…"I’ll
be there in 10 minutes."..."No, I can’t believe
that…Sue’s going out with who?”
The street car driver says he can’t stand it some days.
This incessant din is about nothing. He comes home every night
with a splitting headache. Because all this “conversation”
isn’t worth listening to. But he can’t avoid it as
he drives back and forth each day. I suggested beeswax ear plugs
but that might precipitate a traffic accident if he can’t
hear oncoming cars.
I still say "thank you" when the taxi driver arrives
at the destination. Now that I think of it, he should thank me
‘cause I just tipped him $5. I thank the underwear clerk
for finding my size, the fruit stand dealer for saving me some
Bartlett pears. I even apologized to the panhandler because I’d
run out of change and had nothing to give him. He snorted and
stormed away.
Trying to be rude is a drag; I can’t go there. I yelled
at the cat for breaking a tea cup by rolling it over the counter.
Do you think the cat cared? And I chased a fisher up my back
lane when it came to close to the squirrels' nest on top of my
garage.
I could never yell in a crowded bus or talk during a movie. It’s
not my style. I’ll just go on being my namby pamby self.
I give my bus seat over to old ladies and I usually talk to the
religious freaks peddling their apocalypse now literature. When
a grizzled drunk said he’d like a lue note (a Canadian $5
bill), I nodded and said so would I.
You’ve got to take me with my good manners or not take me
at all. Will you pardon me right now? The telephone is ringing
and I always answer it. Just another sign of my polite self.
©2008 by Jim Bawden. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 17, 2008.
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