Urban politeness.

[rivka]

Vignette 1: I am sitting on a bench along the sidewalk, eating a sandwich. At the other end of the bench, a middle-aged man is talking quietly on his cell phone. I catch phrases here and there - benign ones, at first, but then he starts repeating, "Why you got to say that? Why you got to talk like that?" His tone remains mild.

Suddenly, he gets up from the bench and walks over to stand about ten feet away from me, still talking into the cell phone. It's still close enough for me to hear him, because he's gotten much louder: "Listen, bitch, you better remember who you're talking to!"

I was a bit taken aback, but pleased that he was considerate enough not to disrupt my lunch or make me nervous by shouting obscenities right next to me.

Vignette 2: I get onto a very crowded bus. There are no seats at all, even in the front section that's reserved for the elderly and people with disabilities, so I brace myself to stand. A frail older woman who looks to be about seventy catches my eye and starts to rise.

"Miss, would you like to sit down?"

"Oh no, ma'am, you don't have to get up."

Immediately, two middle-aged, apparently able-bodied men fall all over themselves to get up and offer me their seats. They'd be the right age to be sons of the older woman, although they obviously don't know her. "Here you go, miss, my stop's about to come up." "You can sit right here."

I thank them as I sit down, and then thank the older woman - who seems quite satisfied with the response to her etiquette lesson.

Comments

Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I feel sorry for the two prepubescent boys in the anonymous commenter's example, because the first thing that leaps to my mind is that they might have been raised to offer their seats to an adult woman regardless of health. I'm fairly sure that curiousangel, as a child, would not have been permitted by his mother to sit while a woman was standing.

Mom wasn't much for public transport -- then again, in Memphis in the 70's and 80's, there wasn't much public transport to consider. Still, she was pretty definite about teaching me to hold doors and offer assistance, and had the situation come up, I feel certain that she'd have made her expectations crystal clear. My father would have had similar expectations, but he'd have led by example instead of instruction. I don't remember it ever really coming up -- by the time I was old enough to remember, it was effectively ingrained in me that there were just things you were Expected To Do.