For Your Consideration

For the last couple weeks, I've dropped my younger daughter off at summer camp every morning, and this has me taking a different route to work in the mornings. The area of San Diego that I live in is fairly old...several of my neighbors have lived in their houses for fifty years or more...but the neighborhood I drove through on my way to work is somewhat older, with narrower streets that were never meant to accomodate two-way traffic with cars parked on both sides of the street. Sure, the city could widen the streets, but the houses are so close to the street as it is now, that on one street alone, you'd have to eliminate a mile or more of houses to make room for the wider street. Not gonna happen.

Besides, this neighborhood is a beach community, and despite the wall-to-wall cars, a good portion of the population there don't drive...they surf. It is not unusual to see an adult on a skateboard, carrying a sack or two of groceries. Seriously, this neighborhood is not really part of the same United States you and I grew up in.

On our way to the camp, I had to slow (from 25 mph) to avoid a collision with an oncoming car at a narrow spot in the street...not because of the street's design, but because the owner of a very large, circa-1970 Buick had parked his car with its left rear fender hanging a couple feet out into the traffic lane on my side of the street.

Now, I am not so highly evolved yet that I don't momentarily think, "asshole!" when I see something like this, but it does invariably make me wonder what's going through someone's mind when they act in a way that inconveniences other people. Sure, it was a momentary inconvenience...I slowed for a moment to let the other car pass, I turned my wheel left a little, then right a little, then left again to get back in the center of my own lane...but lately, it seems that there are a lot of little inconveniences like that.

Yesterday, for example, I followed a guy in an SUV into the parking lot at work. There were two adjacent spots up ahead, and we headed for them with him in the lead. He pulled in and parked...with two wheels on the line between the two spots. Had I followed him in and parked far enough away from the car on the other side of me that I could get out, he would have been trapped in his truck. There was a good five feet between him and the car to his right, so he had no reason not to center his truck in the spot. Because I wanted to avoid inconveniencing him, I drove on and found another spot. As we walked towards the building where my office and his classroom is, I said (dripping sarcasm), "Nice parking job." He looked back at his truck, but otherwise ignored me.

We've probably all experienced those kindly souls who will drive to the head of a line of cars backed up onto the freeway from an exit ramp, and menace their way in, contributing to the delay for everyone else.

The list could go on, but my point is that I've observed that people seem less concerned about taking other people into consideration lately. It's as though the vast majority has decided that their own convenience makes it okay to be inconsiderate of others. What's more, this same majority can't stand being inconvenienced in the least little bit, as though their objectives for the day are more important than yours or mine. Ours has become a culture of entitlement.

What has happened to manners, these days? I love movies, used to love going to the movies and everything about movie theatres, but you can't see a film in a multiplex without someone kicking the back of your chair, bumping you with their elbow or their ass when they get up to leave in the middle of (or arrive late for) the movie, and answer their phone.

The irony is that as the world gets more crowded, manners become more important. Manners are what keep people sane as their personal space decreases. Politeness smooths the unpleasant ripples in our day that tend to build on each other and become whitecaps before a storm. Ever see the Michael Douglas movie, "Falling Down"? The main character finds himself heading inexorably toward disaster because a convenience store clerk wouldn't break a dollar so he could make a phone call after his car broke down. Sure, it's fiction, but we hear about stories like this all the time: road rage, office shootings, school shootings. In the aftermath of such tragedies, we inevitably learn that the perpetrator was an "outsider" or a "loner" and that they felt angry about being excluded somehow.

Manners and politeness are more than just a means of letting others have their way to avoid immediate conflict, they send a message to the person we're being polite to: "You matter. You're important enough for me to accept a moment of inconvenience." People tend not to feel excluded if they're often shown they matter to those around them.

I'll open the door for someone (even another man), if I get there a second or two quicker. (If I'm walking up to the door at the same time as a woman, I'll make sure I get to the door quicker.) "After you," I'll say. About half the time, they'll respond, "No, after you," and almost always will say, "Thanks."

There. Was that so hard?