She's Doing What?

Where Have All The Manners Gone?

Ok, here I go about one of my pet peeves. Why are people so rude and thoughtless today? They honk at you if you try to wait until the elderly person gets completely across the street. They practically snatch things out of your hands if they want it. They call you rude names as a matter of course.

I see young people smart off to older people and I just want to smack them. I watched my youngest grandniece slap her mother the other day. This child is three. What will she be doing when she is sixteen?

Young parents have been led to believe by the so-called experts that children have rights. Well, OK, but rights come with responsibilites. Everyone seems to want the rights but not the responsibilites. Kids want their own room and the right to shut the door and forbid their parents to enter unless they knock and are given permission to enter. Not in my house! When you get your own house, and are paying all your own bills, then you have earned that right.

'Experts' tell young parents not to spank their children. Well, I got spanked when I misbehaved and it didn't warp me. But, it did make me understand to respect what my mother and father said to me. And, I was never allowed to misbehave until I had my parents in a rage, so spanking too hard was never a problem. A few good smacks early on and I decided that I'd better behave.

And, I really hate this feeling of entitlement that people have today. They act as if you are being cruel to them if they can't have everything they want. Well, they can have everything they want, just as soon as they get a job and can buy it. They are not entitled to everything just because they are breathing. There's a great line in the movie "The Big Chill" where one guy says to the others, "No one ever said life was going to be easy. At least they never said it to me." I think we need to quit making it so easy on our kids and on people who don't want to work for their living.

Lack of appreciation is really high on my list right now. I'll give you an example. Twenty months ago my EX-daughter-in-law called from California, drunk and nearly incoherent as usual, and told me that I might wake up one morning to find her on my doorstep. I told her to please not come as I had all I could take care of with a sick husband and a son with a brain injury. Did she listen? NOOOO. She came anyway. Two months later she wound up in the hospital with an acute abdominal infection and nearly died. They gave her a 5% chance of survival. After they released her five months later, we brought her into our home to care for her as she had no other place to go. No parents, no siblings and no relatives were alive to take her in. She's now been here for 15 months. And, to date, she has yet to say thank you, or get up in the morning and ask how I'm doing or how my husband is feeling, or can she help me or anything else to indicate she sees me as anything more than a non-paid servant. When people ask why I took her in as she and my son had been divorced for 14 years my only answer is she had no place else to go and she's the mother of two of my grandsons. I wouldn't throw a dog into the street in that condition. But, I would think she could show a little appreciation. But, relief is in sight. Her hearing for SSI is in a week and if she is approved I'm moving her into her own place pronto. It's not that I resent what I've done, it's that I resent her lack of manners.

One of my favorite sayings is "Manners are like air in your tires. It's only air but it makes the ride so much nicer." So, I ask again, where have all the manners gone?