I looked forward to the dinner. The menu was inviting, the dining room gracious. They suggested the meal could be a bit of an experience. I hoped so, anyway. It was part of a long-planned trip that was to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for us.
Not much about the fellow at a nearby table was noticeable, except that the mild disarray of his clothing suggested calculation along with carelessness. A bit of bohemian style not fully abandoned in middle age.
He became noticeable when he began to complain roughly about his dinner and then made a show of sending it back to the kitchen. The servers acquiesced. The maitre d' nodded and smiled as the man declared that he was himself a chef and simply could not eat the food that had been served to him. Apologies were made, new servings were brought, and the rest of us were able to return to our dinners without further interruption.
On a second night the complainer repeated his performance. Those of us within earshot paused while servers hovered and the chef himself appeared. Again apologies were made, new servings brought, and our meals permitted to continue.
The man was, of course, a bully. He abused dining room workers who were in no position to fight back. He was also something else. To the other diners whose evenings he interrupted, he was extravagantly rude.
The episodes irritated a particular nerve in me. I am by background and some aspects of attitude a southerner. I love the lilt and resonance of the region's many accents. I love the lyric sense that nourishes its distinguished literature. I love the gumbo of cultures and the rainbow of music, from blues and jazz to the hints of bagpipe in the Scots-Irish tunes of the Appalachians.
And one more attitude marks me out as a southerner: I am hyper-sensitive to considerations of courtesy. By this I do not mean mandarin systems of etiquette. I mean simply that a person should not knowingly discomfort another.
A lifetime of residential relocation has taught me that others may agree in principle but differ sharply in practice.
In the Northeast some idiom seemed quite coarse. I had to learn that it was not meant to attack or insult me. It was just a way of speaking. I had also to learn in those regions that my own manners could seem to be a fancy pose. When as a young man I first said "sir" and "ma'am" to figures of authority or respect, some thought I was mocking them.
When I moved to the Midwest, my new acquaintances did not view me as a southerner. To them I was an easterner. Our conversational rhythms were very different. I thought they could take a long time to answer a simple question. They thought I was brusque in twitching to wrap up before they had finished giving information I'd asked for.
North, South, East, West: Ideas of manners varied widely.
As a guest at one family's Sunday dinner I brought the entire meal to a brief halt by putting sugar in my iced tea. They had never seen it done. They thought my behavior was an unkind comment on the beverage they had served me.
I came to brace myself especially for funerals and weddings, where in my estimation accepted norms could range
from odd to ghastly.
Whatever the variation in particulars, two attitudes are common:
--Rules of courtesy are quite specific. Polite people must do certain things and must refrain from doing certain others.
-- One's own customs are standard, and everyone else's are -- in the usual euphemism -- "different."
The years have rigorously disabused me of that second notion. The principle of the thing is what I care about. In my view, the effort of common courtesy is a gesture of respect for others. Failures of courtesy are thus the opposite. They amount to saying You don't matter.
Hence I take more than a passing interest in public displays of rudeness. Even small ones, like that of the dawdler who queues beside a wall-mounted menu for several minutes but bothers to read it and make up his mind only when he has reached the head of the line. Or the grocery shopper who must tidy every corner of her purse before moving on from the cashier.
We can give these offenders benefit of the doubt. They may be only carelessly indifferent to the interests of the people around them.
But the boor in the dining room was one of the sort who seem to perceive some point or pleasure in throwing their weight around. He was quite clearly aware of his impact on other diners. (And he did clean up his act when they -- peers -- began to stare him down.)
Rudeness at a focused, personal level, stirs a kind of distrust in me. If you tell me I don't matter, I take you at your word and keep my guard up even when you are all smiles. Respect is a Humpty-Dumpty kind of thing. If it's gone, it's gone.
And with age I have become less willing even to appear tolerant of discourtesy. I hope that I never return rudeness for rudeness. However, I am no longer likely to smile through it -- or give leeway to those who actually announce that they mean to impinge on my time, space or comfort: I hope you don't mind if I ...
In fact I do mind, and nowadays I probably will say so. Often this visibly surprises the advertisers, who seem to feel entitled to the sufferance of others. They expect to enjoy all their own prerogatives and some of mine, too.
I prefer to hang on to mine ...
Thank you very much.
