Hal­cian Pierre

As the say­ing goes, 'Man­ners maketh man', but by to­day's stan­dards, I think that a sec­tion of man(kind) has de-evolved and turned in­to a beast.

Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, man­ners are like laws, in that "... they cod­i­fy or set a stan­dard for hu­man be­hav­iour, but they are un­like laws in that there is no for­mal sys­tem for pun­ish­ing trans­gres­sions, the main in­for­mal 'pun­ish­ment' be­ing so­cial dis­ap­proval." If so, then I must be an anom­aly, be­cause by to­day's stan­dards I be­lieve that a pock­et of so­ci­ety doesn't re­al­ly un­der­stand what they are (or even know that they have gone miss­ing). It's a so­ci­ety where any­thing goes, good bad or in­dif­fer­ent. We hard­ly say 'please' any­more. 'Ex­cuse me' is used to ex­press shock more of­ten than to be par­doned af­ter a sneeze or burp or even to catch some­one's at­ten­tion. 'Par­don me' seems to have gone from our lex­i­con al­to­geth­er. We've even for­got­ten the sim­ple act of say­ing 'I'm sor­ry' when we make mis­take, a word of hurt, or even ad­mit­ting our wrong­do­ing, in­tend­ed or oth­er­wise. When a man opens a door for me, I al­ways tell him 'thank you'. Does this mean some­thing is wrong with me?

Here's what I've ob­served... There seems to be a com­plete lack of so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and those that hold on to the 'old school' are of­ten thought of as relics of a by­gone era that have no place in the new school (or scheme of things). The new school seem­ing­ly dic­tates that we have sen­si­tive con­ver­sa­tions on our cell phones and speak as if we are alone in the taxi, el­e­va­tor, gro­cery, etc... Then we have to deal with some taxi dri­vers that ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve that road rage equals dri­ving skill. If you try to cor­rect them in any way, well, heav­en help you and your an­ces­tors, be­cause all of you will get some choice ad­jec­tives for your trou­ble. Even the sim­ple act of greet­ing some­one with a sim­ple 'Good morn­ing' when you see them is dis­ap­pear­ing and it's some­thing that both­ers me. If you're in doubt, try count­ing how many peo­ple you know (aside from the work­place) that still say 'Good morn­ing' when they see you. How many hands did you use? By the same to­ken, how many peo­ple do you greet? Can you count these in­stances on both hands? How about one hand? Here's the thing. My gen­er­a­tion came from a time when tele­vi­sion ac­tu­al­ly signed off be­fore mid­night, and there was no ca­ble, lap­tops or cell phones. Some of us grew up watch­ing an "El­mo less" Sesame Street and Rik­ki Tik­ki.

Grace wasn't the maid, but some­thing that was said be­fore meals and there was a tac­it agree­ment that every child in your neigh­bour­hood would be 'looked af­ter' by the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. In oth­er words, if an adult caught you slip­ping up so­cial­ly, be­hav­ioural­ly or oth­er­wise, you were go­ing to be cor­rect­ed and brought be­fore your par­ent or guardian. The di­rect ef­fect of this was our slow, By Hal­cian Pierre yet steady tran­si­tion to be­com­ing prop­er and po­lite young peo­ple. Even at this age (which I will whis­per to you if you ask), I still hold on to this way of thought, and it still sur­pris­es me when­ev­er I see young­sters walk­ing along and bold­ly ig­nor­ing the adults around them when "their eye make four". If I had on­ly tried do­ing that when I was small, I'm sure I would have had few­er teeth in my mouth by now... Even now as I move about the city, there is a smile on my lips, and if I hap­pen to lock eyes with a stranger, I al­ways greet them. I say "Good Morn­ing" to ran­dom peo­ple as they ei­ther alight from their taxis or pass in front of me. Some­times they an­swer, some­times they don't, but I don't make it an is­sue be­cause not every­one may be go­ing through that text­book 'good morn­ing', but even if I'm hav­ing the worst day, I still main­tain my smile and say a 'Howdy do'.

Ac­cord­ing to my late Granny, "You nev­er know who will see you," and that point was ac­tu­al­ly proven re­cent­ly. As I stood at my usu­al cor­ner wait­ing for trans­port and smil­ing and say­ing my good-morn­ings to all and sundry, a young la­dy that I'd see drop­ping off her child at day-care came up to me and just like that, she said "Good morn­ing" and gave me a hug. She said, "I've al­ways no­ticed you and I just love your smile and how you greet peo­ple just so. I just had to come here and give you a hug. You ac­tu­al­ly make my morn­ings, be­cause I tell my­self that even if my day is bad, this la­dy is feel­ing some kind of hap­pi­ness some­where." It touched me so much, all I could do was hug her back and say a heart­felt 'Thank you.' She gave me hope and be­cause of her, I know that even if the world seems crazy at times, there are those of us that still hold on to and em­ploy those so­cial norms, mores and val­ues. Please pass them on. Don't be self­ish. Whis­per in­to your cell phone, or send a text. Ap­pre­ci­ate if some­one is look­ing out for you and say 'thank you'. Greet each oth­er with a 'Good morn­ing'. Be po­lite, and don't for­get that "Man­ners maketh man... and "woman" as well.