Driving south for a Florida vacation, I had a moment of pleasure when we stopped for gasoline in Kentucky. Racing down I-75 beside huge transport trucks, dodging elderly drivers from New York in Buicks and watching for unmarked State Highway patrol cars is anything but relaxing. Rest Area pit stops and refueling stations give some relief but finding an example of my old values was reassuring.
Reassuring because many of the old values I and some other old farts hold dear, are quickly disappearing. I was inside paying for my petrol, which was less expensive than that sold in North Bay even though it had some Canadian content, when I noticed an Airborne Master Sergeant in front of me with his head bare right down to his military scalping. He had his forage cap tucked under a strap, and I thought it was because of the warm weather outside. However, as I exited the store, a young one-striper in desert camo gear held the door for me, and then he removed his forage cap before entering the store. Someone had taught these men that removing your headgear when entering another person’s home or place of business was the courteous thing to do.
Showing respect for another person’s home or business seems to be passé now, but the American Airborne thought that the old values had some merit. Maybe they had had some old Gunny with my values in basic training or perhaps they were just practising for a foreign posting where that courteous action would gain them some credibility, but doing it in Kentucky surely seemed nice to me.
I take off my cap or hat when I go into a restaurant to eat, something I was taught as a child as being a sign of respect and courtesy to the owner and staff of the restaurant. However it seems that now leaving your ball cap on is the manly thing to do. Certainly the women accompanying these hat men do not object and even some of them wear a cap while eating. I say eating because they are not dining.
Dining means you talk to the people you are with, not to an electronic device. It is called having a conversation. It also means handling your knife and fork with some decorum. However, I suppose it is no more discourteous to text somebody while ignoring your dining partners than it is to leave your hat on. It surely must bring home to your guest just how important they are to be ignored in favour of some text message about your friend’s sick cat or that they are now entering, selfie attached, a Tim’s for a double double.
Why should I expect a young man or woman to remove their head gear in a restaurant when they have worn it all through school classes? That and their obscenely worded tee shirts are a sign of the times and I guess we old fogies might as well give in. Is there any value to showing signs of courtesy and respect towards others? ‘Dissing’ elders and people in positions of trust and authority has become the norm for the new generation. Life is more casual. There seems to be fewer social commitments, and indeed, even less attention to personal commitment by some.
I mean, like, even the language is changing. Like, the most misused and abused word of the young set is now ‘like’ followed by ‘he/she goes . . .’ Maybe ‘goes’ is easier to text than ‘said’ and perhaps implies some manner of speaking that used to be described by adjectives and in some highly charged instances, an adverb. In a world where communication is full of abbreviations and a limitation on the number of characters leaves much unsaid, over-using ambiguous words is common practice and even awesome. Is it any wonder that we too often have a failure to communicate?
Like does it mean anything to give your word or make a promise, politicians and used car salespeople aside? Or like does a handshake have any relevance anymore? The thing is, at the end of the day, someone taught this new generation to act and speak the way they do. It was, after all, like, my generation that developed and laid the ground work for all these tools of modern communication and game-playing. We created this nether world and now we get to reap the results.
So if you or I want to escape back to that world of gentlemen removing hats and table etiquette we will have to pick up some dusty old tome by an author of yesteryear, sit in a big comfortable over-stuffed arm chair and read. Perhaps with a little Mozart or Beethoven playing in the background we could make our escape. Like, that would be nice.
