Chivalry, RIP--Civility, Code Blue...

Civility, like its forefather Chivalry, is, if not dead, then certainly on life support and hanging on by a toenail.

 It is perhaps my rapidly advancing middle age crankiness, but it seems to me that the quality of driving in Southern California has deteriorated markedly in the last 20 years or so. I have never seen a better example of "it is all about me" than the drivers that grudgingly share the freeway with me on a regular basis. Turn signals are considered optional and  are rarely in sync with the direction that  the driver is actually going. To use your own signal is to invite the person in the next lane to stomp on the accelerator and fill the gap you were going to move into. That is "their" space, after all. Thus, the tailgating resembling the Autopia at D-land.

Also optional is the observance of the requirement to only use your cell phone in a hands-free mode. I do believe I am the only sucker who thinks you have to obey that law. As I cannot keep a earpiece in my ear to save my life, I am resigned to driving around with a full  headset on, ala the old time operators, while watching you drift and weave and change lanes without warning while you yak away on the cell phone in your hand..  Nothing says self absorbed twit like driving like a drunken sailor because that call was more important than us both living to see our destination.

Likewise self-absorbed, or perhaps just thoughtless, was the yahoo who left the remains of his fast food meal in the gutter at the center of the end of my driveway. Thoughtless enough if it were merely tossed, but this was carefully placed, in gutter, next to the barrels at the curb awaiting collection on trash day! Of course, one has to be civilized to be civil, and pigs is pigs, after all.

I more than occasionally wonder that civility as gone the way of the dinosaurs, only to be reminded that there are still some just plain nice people left out there. They wave you into a break in traffic in front of them, let you merge cheerfully, rush to hold the door open with a smile...all things which I thought only I and my family still did.  It should not touch me so deeply that these once-common courtesies are still observed, but touch me it does. Almost gives you hope.

Civility may be gasping for breath, but these gestures are life's oxygen.