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People who blow their noses, picking deeply into them with a tissue at the dinner table, or in a suffocating airplane seat next to you whilst robbing the armrest while you are eating the inedible, may as well eat dessert, squat down and defecate on the floor in plain daylight for all to see. Cleaning the body in any way, shape, or form while eating with others is well, highly selfish, thoughtless, and yells of your lack of tact and social graces. Heck, forget grace; that would be three up from decency, which should do well henceforth to demarcate the good zero bar for all. A reason I have yet to travel to India is because I am unsure if I wish to steep myself like a tea bag into a society that eats and then entertains defecatory action on the street, just in any old spot that's handy. I shan't mix with this kind of thoughtless thinking in our hard-earned slightly evolved modern day. 2017 now. Not happening.
Once I was on a jet from JFK to Dublin nonstop. I put on those thin bad socks they give you with the earplugs and matching thin eye mask and excused myself from my window seat to walk the long aisle to the toilet. I walked in, slid the lock closed on the door and felt my feet suddenly wet and cold in the socks. Someone had urinated on the floor and not sponged it up. We had 9 hours to go to get to Dublin. My feet were fated to be soaked in some anonymous jackass's urine for 9 more hours? 10 including baggage claim? And I would do what, exactly? Would I remove the urine-soaked socks and put my urine-soiled bare feet back into my shoes so that they would forever bear the stain of such disgust? I am a smoker and whew, let me tell you, I could have eaten a cigarette at that moment. I wanted to eat a cigarette.
Remember the Powder Room? Yes, most every restaurant that was hip in the 20s to well into the 60s even, had one. They had coat check closets, powder rooms. Both of these point to a society that held a seam of trust in its collective garment, an agreed tradition of women wearing makeup or beauty being part of what we supported as a culture. If you check your coat, you trusted that no one would take off with it. It's 2017. How many coat checks or powder rooms have you come upon recently? Zilch. Zilch. Zilch. Ah, the milkman. Can you imagine our having a milkman now? Who would trust a) the milkman, b) the milk, c) the passers-by, or d) the neighbors for not poisoning your milk on your step? I am unsure if I would/could trust the milk left on my doorstep. You?
What about it being a social norm to dress up to the nines--with white gloves, pill-box hats, high heels and hosiery--to merely get on an airplane? This was celebratory for the massive accomplishment that was the flying aluminum can crammed with sardine strangers, all smoking and ashing out in tiny metal swivel boxes. We celebrated achievement, such as the airplane; we trusted a stranger to bring the milk that would feed and grow our children's bones and teeth, we all checked out coats knowing that they would be there to warm us upon our exits, and a great many of us powdered our noses and made conversation and friends in doing so.
Societal trust seems as if it has evaporated like water on a July sidewalk these dizzy days. This could be root to our plethora of "other problems". I posit that the lack of societal trust being a norm for us now points to all else that we dislike and do not openly associate with/to .... #trust. Simple thoughtless acts could ruin entire trips for people. We will be wise to up our game in this society and provide more pleasant experiences for the whole of us and in general. Urine, snot, and/or poop are NOT fun memories for anyone. So be a dear, would ya? Up the manners. Please do this for the good, for the peace of mind of us all.
Manners matter.
Once I was on a jet from JFK to Dublin nonstop. I put on those thin bad socks they give you with the earplugs and matching thin eye mask and excused myself from my window seat to walk the long aisle to the toilet. I walked in, slid the lock closed on the door and felt my feet suddenly wet and cold in the socks. Someone had urinated on the floor and not sponged it up. We had 9 hours to go to get to Dublin. My feet were fated to be soaked in some anonymous jackass's urine for 9 more hours? 10 including baggage claim? And I would do what, exactly? Would I remove the urine-soaked socks and put my urine-soiled bare feet back into my shoes so that they would forever bear the stain of such disgust? I am a smoker and whew, let me tell you, I could have eaten a cigarette at that moment. I wanted to eat a cigarette.
Remember the Powder Room? Yes, most every restaurant that was hip in the 20s to well into the 60s even, had one. They had coat check closets, powder rooms. Both of these point to a society that held a seam of trust in its collective garment, an agreed tradition of women wearing makeup or beauty being part of what we supported as a culture. If you check your coat, you trusted that no one would take off with it. It's 2017. How many coat checks or powder rooms have you come upon recently? Zilch. Zilch. Zilch. Ah, the milkman. Can you imagine our having a milkman now? Who would trust a) the milkman, b) the milk, c) the passers-by, or d) the neighbors for not poisoning your milk on your step? I am unsure if I would/could trust the milk left on my doorstep. You?
What about it being a social norm to dress up to the nines--with white gloves, pill-box hats, high heels and hosiery--to merely get on an airplane? This was celebratory for the massive accomplishment that was the flying aluminum can crammed with sardine strangers, all smoking and ashing out in tiny metal swivel boxes. We celebrated achievement, such as the airplane; we trusted a stranger to bring the milk that would feed and grow our children's bones and teeth, we all checked out coats knowing that they would be there to warm us upon our exits, and a great many of us powdered our noses and made conversation and friends in doing so.
Societal trust seems as if it has evaporated like water on a July sidewalk these dizzy days. This could be root to our plethora of "other problems". I posit that the lack of societal trust being a norm for us now points to all else that we dislike and do not openly associate with/to .... #trust. Simple thoughtless acts could ruin entire trips for people. We will be wise to up our game in this society and provide more pleasant experiences for the whole of us and in general. Urine, snot, and/or poop are NOT fun memories for anyone. So be a dear, would ya? Up the manners. Please do this for the good, for the peace of mind of us all.
Manners matter.
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