'Tis the season for bad manners?

'Tis the season for bad manners?

Nov. 30, 2000

'Smatter of Fact
By Katharhynn Heidelberg

I know we’ve all had those times: Our 10-hour workday begins with slopping tea over a white shirt, is littered with much stress, and culminates with the sudden and dread realization that you’re behind on the old Christmas list. And so, bravely displaying that amber-colored splotch on your shirt like a badge, you soldier on to the stores.

Possibly because nothing could be worse than the day you’ve already had, you’re expecting the stores to be better. Soft, traditional Christmas carols. Pretty displays. A few polite folks — all shopping different sections than thine tea-stained self. The smell, perhaps of cinnamon, or hot cocoa. Sugar plums all around...

Hah! What you find, immediately, is a mob scene, cluttered with children who think dead center of a busy aisle is the ideal spot to tie a shoe; people who shop four abreast and move at a pace that would try the patience of a snail, and that you’ve got company — lots of it — in the lay-away line.

The inner super Grinch takes over, and you scowl, mutter and fume. How dare everyone have the same idea as you!

They’re human, that’s how. Perhaps it is time to remember, as you gripe, that their minds continue to work just like yours. They too, frown, sigh and glare at the clerk who, it seems, actually had the audacity to come to work. Complaining isn’t what the season of good cheer is about.

Our manners are slipping, folks. And, as is often the case, our children are watching. At least, I hope the two darlings I encountered on a recent foray can invoke the old "poor role model" excuse. Their Role Model must have been in the restroom, or on permanent mental leave.

The two lads, somewhere between 8 and 10, literally spun on the floor as they howled maniacally. They kept kicking a boxed toy (which, of course, they had not paid for) back and forth across the aisle, as hard as they could, and when it slid under my cart, they simply began kicking each other.

Wit spent, but not energy, they then took Role Model’s cart, with an infant sister inside, on a joyride. I remember this because, as they whizzed by, one of them took the time to "compliment" me on certain anatomical features.

I summoned all the willpower I had to ignore them, and I consoled myself with the knowledge that there could be no reasoning with kids that inclined to ill-mannered, brutish hooliganism.

About 20 minutes later, the two little gems rejoined the lay-way line, where they began tossing around a football (also not paid for), running into other people’s carts and screaming. A clerk’s polite request to "settle down" was blatantly ignored.

Role Model turned out to be an older sister, and by the way her huge smile dripped off her face, she must have thought it was all a hoot. When Darling #1 repeatedly threatened to mutilate Darling #2 as recompense for a stolen baseball cap, Role Model didn’t so much as bat an eye. Where’s a counselor when you need one? Heck, where’s store security when you need it?

The two Darlings are clearly the products of households that are either tyrannically oppressive enough to prompt such wild release, or permissive enough to have taught them such behavior doesn’t matter — "everybody" acts that way these days.

This is an exaggeration, of course, but it is frighteningly true that sometimes we adults behave no better. We justify such behavior by the season, our mood, or the sort of day we’ve had. But the truth remains: National shopping sprees are seasonal. Good manners are timeless.