What happened to Common Courtesy?

First, what is Courtesy? 

It is the showing of politeness in one’s attitude and behavior toward others.

So let me ask you a question. When two people are talking and someone walks up to them, is it courteous to interrupt their conversation to ask your question?  No.

Is it courteous for them to keep talking for 5, 6, even 7 minutes without even once inquiring why the other person is standing there? No!

At some point, someone, somewhere has to show courtesy.  Someone has to be nice – don’t they?  In this day and age, courtesy is lost on just about everyone under 40 (in my opinion). We don’t wait for someone to pull out of the parking spot.  We speed up instead of slowing down when someone signals they want over, and we ignore people we don’t want to be inconvenienced to talk to.

The problem is it starts early on…

I’ve been to many, many elementary schools and have seen that children can’t talk before school starts “sit quietly” they are told.  They can’t talk between classes and there have been a few times I’ve noticed they can’t even talk during lunch.  This is the most important time of a child’s life – to learn social skills!  Recess cannot be the only place in school a child gets to practice social skills – this is why we have bullies.  A limited amount of time to play on a limited amount of jungle gyms with the maximum amount of energy and inner frustration to release.

By middle school we’ve got cell phones and texting. High school there’s FaceBook and the other non-social ‘social’ platforms that instigate rudeness without having to be face to face with the person you are hurting.  If you can’t see the hurt on their face you won’t know that YOU caused it. Adulthood you start driving – you are isolated from real human contact and literally devoid of whatever courtesy is truly required to be social that our world has completely lost the ability.

We have GOT to change people!

We have got to CHANGE people!

Or is it just me?