To the manner born

You’re in a fast food restaurant. It’s the middle of everyone’s lunch break so you’ve been waiting in line for, say, 20 minutes. You skipped breakfast because you woke up late so now you’re really hungry. And as you wait patiently in line for your turn, a couple of girls in front of you continue conversing idly on whether or not they should dye their hair.

"I’m not sure red really goes with my complexion," explains girl A, playfully twirling a strand of hair, her manicured nails glinting in the fluorescent light.

"What? It totally does!" girl B replies exasperatedly. "You’re fair-skinned, so you can totally carry off red."

"Hmmm…" says girl A, who’s clearly the boss of this duo, as she wrinkles her nose. "I don’t think so. Red hair is so over anyway."

"Yeah, I guess you’re right," girl B answers without missing a beat, forgetting the fact that she’d been trying to convince girl A that red was the perfect color for her hair.

"Next!" calls out the girl at the counter. The two girls move to the front and start to rhapsodize over the menu, pausing thoughtfully in between comments as they peruse their options.

"Maybe I’ll have a cheeseburger," girl B says. "Or is that too fattening? What do you think?" she asks girl A earnestly.

"You should stay away from bread," girl A declares sagely. "Bad carbs."

"Of course, you’re absolutely right," she says breathlessly. "So, what do you think I should have?"

As girl B waits for A to reply, you resist the urge to slap them silly and spread peanut butter over their frilly white miniskirts before you faint from hunger.

How many times has this happened to you?

What is the point, I ask, in lining up for 20 minutes only to think about what you’d like to order right when you get to the counter? None whatsoever! Yet people do it all the time.

People are so rude these days. Suddenly it seems like everyone’s behaving like an uncivilized monkey, acting with no thought or care for their neighbor.

Like when you’re at the cinema watching a movie you’ve been dying to see when suddenly some man’s cellphone rings and he answers it and starts a conversation in the middle of the freakin’ climax!

Insufferable!

Or when you pay for your purchases and then the cashier gets snippy when you don’t have change.

Annoying!

I always used to think that manners were a byproduct of good breeding. If your parents taught you to say please and thank you, then lovely. If they taught you to think about what you’d like to order as soon as you get in line, then even better! But for those unlucky in the parental department, with parents who chose not to educate their children in the finer points of etiquette, then that wasn’t their fault.

Until I was the victim of one of the most uncivilized acts known to man.

I was at the supermarket waiting for a friend to finish running her errands when I decided to get a sandwich. I was hungry, after all, and it had been a busy day for me.

So I ordered a Hungarian sausage sandwich, hold the ketchup with extra cucumber and onion. As I chewed thoughtfully, enjoying the crisp flavors of the spicy sausage, mellow cucumber and tangy onion, I noticed a woman slowly making her way towards me.

I didn’t know her from Adam, so was surprised when she approached me and motioned to talk to me. Since I had been brought up with relatively semi-decent manners, I smiled at her and continued chewing, minding my own beeswax. My smile seemed encouragement enough. She walked right up to me and asked, "Excuse me, miss, but could I just give you something?"

Assuming it was a freebie of some sort, I paused my chewing and gave a half shrug/ slight nod, as though to say, go ahead, do what you must.

The woman slid over a piece of paper in front me. I smiled at her, a demure smile of thanks, as she walked away then glanced down at the paper and nearly choked. In bold black letters it read: LOSE WEIGHT NOW.

I coughed as a rather large un-masticated piece of sausage slid down my throat. "Are you okay?" my friend asked in concern, putting her purchases on the floor before she helpfully whacked my back.

"Yes," I gasped as soon as I got my breath back. "I’m fine. It’s just that this horrid woman came up to me while I was eating and gave me this awful leaflet," I said, waving the offending piece of paper in front of her. "And look, it even has a list of ‘ideal weights’ we should all aspire to! Puh-lease. Like we don’t have enough to worry about in life. "

My friend looked like she was about to laugh. I glared at her, daring her to giggle.

"There’s no need to get all worked up about this, Bea," she calmly replied. "And anyway, the ideal weights are there so that people can have healthy goals when they lose weight."

"Uh-huh," I said mockingly. "So since I’m 5’2," I said while scanning the list, "…then I should weigh about 120 pounds." Pause. "Well, that’s not too bad actually." Surprise colored my tone as I took in the reasonable number.

"Ummm, Bea, that’s for men. You should be looking here," my friend explained, pointing her finger to the next column labeled "for women."

"What?! Oh crap," I muttered as I realized that my ideal weight was about 105 pounds.

So not only was my ego pounded to shit by some stupid weight-loss pamphlet, I had been judged – and during a most vulnerable state, too – by some leaflet-distributing stranger and found wanting.

I found myself going over the event in my head over and over again on my way home. Should I have given her a swift karate chop to the head before she handed me that damn leaflet? Or should I have snappily retorted, "This mayo is fat-free," before she managed to sneak away?

Either way, both seemed wrong. Not because I had any qualms about hurting her but because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place! That inconsiderate cow obviously didn’t have any breeding.

As I went on the Net to search for a politically correct way to respond in a similar situation, I found that there was no current ruling about attacking unsuspicious people with offensive leaflets. But as I read on in christianmommies.com – my source for all things polite and right – they go on to quote the maven of manners, Ms. Emily Post.

"Manners," she says, "are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them." "Manner," on the other hand, "is personality – the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life."

Though there was no court-approved ruling regarding politesse in leaflet situations, that woman should’ve known better. It was very rude of her. And obscene. OK, maybe not obscene but close.

Ever since that incident, I’ve decided to take a more proactive stance when being subjected to rudeness. And you should too. I’m sick and tired of living with uncivilized monkeys. So if some rude man answers his cellphone in the middle of a movie, calmly and politely ask him to desist from using his phone or to take his call outside. And if he refuses to listen, pelt him with popcorn – the buttery kind is more effective. If you catch someone double-dipping (a personal pet peeve of mine) crab sticks into the sour cream dip at a buffet, walk up to that person and facetiously say, "Did you see that story on the news about how a bunch of people in Europe became ill from that strange virus? Doctors think they may have contracted it by double-dipping crabsticks in sour cream dip at a party."

Sometimes you have to be rude to be polite.

A week later, as I stood in the supermarket, slowly chewing my Hungarian sausage sandwich – hold the ketchup, extra cucumber and onion – a woman came up to me.

"Excuse me," she began.

"Stop right there," I said in mid-chew, mouth still full. "You’re not getting to me this time. I don’t want to know about your fat-free diet or lose-weight-now program," I lectured, lettuce dropping everywhere as I shook my sandwich in her face. "I just want to eat here in peace and enjoy my sandwich. Is that really too much to ask?"

"Well," the woman replied huffily, chest swelling in indignation, "I just wanted to say hello."

Turns out she was the mother of a friend of mine who’d recognized me from my column photo. As I sheepishly apologized, I realized that there was a lesson to be learned here, well, two actually.

Always be nice. And don’t talk with your mouth full.

* * *

I’m still craving for another of those Hungarian sausage sandwiches. Send me some at ohbea@rocketmail.com.