Miss-ed Manners

Am I Type-A? That is pretty much undeniable. My highs apex at altitudes tropospheric; the lows bottom out at depths abyssal. Garnish the mix with a bit of passion and you get quite the volatile mix.

Unfortunately, sometimes that passion gets laser-beam focused on matters minuscule. You may find that the case with the current pebble in my shoe.

Our manners stink! My manners stink.

Consider the lady that took the call after her cell phone rang loudly in the middle of the first-weekend showing of the most talked about movie of the year. No apparent embarrassment on her part despite the ocular daggers from all patrons within fifty feet. She must have missed the fifteen prods that flashed across the screen to turn the ear-tumors off so as not to disturb other folks. Bad manners epitomized.

Remember back to high school, the lovely brunette that sat right behind you in biology with the common sense of that which oozed in your petri dish? She sat there and clicked her pen. Non-stop. Throughout the teacher's lecture. And she was gifted with the rhythm of Navin R. Johnson. Arrggghhh!

Perhaps you have kids. You ever have one of them insert half a side of beef into their pie-hole and sit there trying to chew it like it was a normal sized-bite? You fervently pray that they not choke because you still can't figure out how it got in their mouth in the first place, you doubt seriously that it will come back out again. Then there's the milk slurper.

You might get to work with an individual who finds bodily noises funnier than Bill Cosby and does everything in their power to amplify them like a rock concert. Ha, ha, ha. You might ride the bus next to the person whose tongue defines (or maybe surpasses) foulness. They cannot complete a sentence without some reproductive or scatological adjective.

Why do some folks (me) get so bent about manners? Manners reflect Christ-likeness. When one exhibits manners, they defer to their fellow creatures. They consider your situation above their own. Romans 12:10 puts the cookies out there for all to grab,

"Be kindly affectionate to one another in brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another."

This is the crux of love. It is the crux of civilization. The only way we can live side-by-side is if I don't party like it's 1999 in my backyard until two in the morning. I recognize that you are waiting for that parking spot and even though I could nose in before you because of the way the other guy backed out, I let you have that spot, and I'll walk ten feet further. I suppress my belch. I swallow before I ask for the mashed potatoes. I let you merge rather than riding the bumper of the guy in front of me so you cannot enter the flow, scoffing at your pitiful situation as I drive on by.

Manners have become a lost art in America as we grow coarser and coarser toward one another. Tragic. To stem the tide, perhaps I'll silence my cell phone next movie. Perhaps I'll take my kids and myself to the bathroom before the start of the next sermon. Perhaps I'll choose my color metaphors more carefully within our conversation. Perhaps I'll listen to your story, really listen, instead of interrupting you with my own.

Perhaps.

Sadly, we (I) oft have no clue that we've (I've) become self-absorbed boors. We get lost in our own private Idaho. It's my comfort and my way. Oh, are you here, too? Sometimes you just need to take me aside and point out my bull elephant behavior. If I listen to Christ in my life at all, I should listen to you, too, and try to tighten the reins on my character. If I don't, you've at least shown your love for me by trying to stem the tide of entropy in my life.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, you just might dampen the peaks and valleys of my Type-A personality, and that couldn't hurt.