Manners

Whatever happened to common courtesy?  Good manners seem to be a thing of the past.  People no longer say "Please" or "thank you" or God forbid "excuse me"     I ride the subway every day and you would think this was a race or the roller derby where bumping people out of the way to get in and get a seat is the only goal.  I have seen able bodied young people brush past elderly people to get to a seat.  Offer to give UP your precious seat?  Almost never!  Yesterday some guy with a bike threw himself into the handicapped seat next to me and fell asleep across the bike which he had blocking most of the aisle.  I said a loud "excuse me" to wake him up so we could get by him to get off at our stop.  He glared at me and edged the bike a fraction of an inch out of the way so we had to squeeze by the dirty bike.  YUCK.  I glared back, but he was already asleep again.

I was in my favorite burrito shop last week and another customers bumped me going AND coming.  Did she say "excuse me" or "pardon me" or ANYTHING?  Nope.  She had to know she had made contact and the polite thing to do it to murmur an apology.  People don't seem to do that anymore.   Is it too old fashioned?  In this ME ME ME world, have we forgotten that there are other people around us?  I recently had someone tell me that my saying "thank you" irritated him.  HUH?  My mother raised me to be polite, and even when I don't want to be, I still am.  I can hear her in the back of my head saying "Manners the butler"  I have NO idea what she meant, but when she said it I knew I was out of line.  I looked up Manners the Butler.  He was apparently spokes-character for paper napkins.  He was a tiny man ( about 5 inches tall) who  "helped " the lady of the house get ready for whatever event by reminding her that the new paper napkins would save her time.  That's what I found anyway.  I guess my mom thought he was also a model for propriety.

So, May I say "Thank you" for reading this and "please" comment if you care to!