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Browsing Tag: #manners
I was waiting on the wife of one of my regular customers today. She’s always super sweet, & I’m invariably glad to see her. “Yankee,” I began, “her daddy was one of my regulars when I first started working down here. I didn’t know what to think of him. He used to say, ‘who’s your momma?’ All the time & tell me when I got married I was gonna hafta wash the skidmarks out of my husband’s drawers!” Yankee’s eyes got rounder. Clearly, she wouldn’t have known how to take him, either. I smiled at Miss Tammy, his daughter. “But I came to love him. He was a nice man.” She nodded. “Daddy was. I remember too, you & another girl from down here came to his funeral.” I paused. I had forgotten about that. “Yeah, me & Skeeter came. It was probably the first funeral I attended on my own.” (Meaning, without my family) I recall Shanea & I talking ourselves into going. We felt that we needed to. “My husband says I go to more funerals than anybody he knows,” I told Tammy. “But he understands now that my customers are like my family… They’ve seen me grow up, in a way. I don’t necessarily like to go, but I need to.” “…
At the risk of seeming shallow, I am thankful for manners today. Money can buy many things, & it can buy manners to a point. However, the truly well-bred & well-raised will stand out in a crowd. It makes a difference when you treat people with respect & make them feel at home in an unfamiliar setting. “Please” & “thank you” go a long way in retail, as well as the rest of the world. It helps to be sincere as well, but if not, fake it & you will still be taking the high road. It’s in the simplest things. It is holding a door for the person at the gas station. It is letting people cross in front of you when it’s raining & you’re cozy in your car. It is not interrupting someone when they’re speaking. It is so many things that here in the south we may take for granted & come as a culture shock when we visit…elsewhere… I hope that people are still ingraining these policies in their children but I don’t think its as commonplace as it used to be, or needs to be. I see a lot of kids that have a shortage of respect for their parents, nevermind strangers. I can only hope that with age comes wisdom & they correct themselves. Please be aware I’m not doing these in…
