Simple Manners

Yesterday, we had another Awkward Bagel Meeting at work. This is because we had a new person starting and my boss brought in the bagels. This time, at least, he did introduce the new person but Bagel Day still evolved into "Staff Crowding into Conference Room and Talking to Their Friends." I don't really mind; it gave me time to talk to my friend and not have to work for a half-hour.

Yet it did occur to me that, as a group, we're a wee bit rude. Fortunately, this time, the new person has actually worked for our company before- prior to my starting here- and so he knows mostly everyone.

I hate being rude. I don't know if it's a British thing or just the fact that I've been raised by a good mother but I'm horribly conscious of bad manners. Yet, there are days, particularly Awkward Bagel Days in which I find myself slipping into the bad manners of those around me by ignoring the new person and chatting to my friends at work.

To be fair, if it's someone I know I'll be working with directly, I do try to converse with them, to get to know them. Yet if it's someone I know who will be only a peripheral in my workday, it's easier for me to ignore them. Sometimes, I'd like to be ruder to people but I have the hardest time with that because if I am even slightly rude, I feel guilty about it for the rest of the day.

I'm noticing more and more that manners are flexible things, changeable things. There are manners while driving, manners while talking, manners while on the cell phone...everything has an etiquette to it.

For example, this morning, I had to get on the interstate, as usual. My entrance onto it has been under construction ever since I moved. I'm used to it but it's still a little tricky. When I get on the interstate, I'm forced into a short lane that merges with the far right lane. If I can't get over into the real lane, I have to sit.

Most mornings, it's not hard. People tend to be kind and move over to let me in. This morning, I didn't have that luck. I had to stop in the temporary lane until a car had passed and I could get over. I hate having to do that, especially when the car that blocked me could easily have gone into the other lane. Instead, they ignored me and blocked me.

It's a small thing but it speaks volumes about that driver's view of the world. To me, driving is one of the simplest ways to express manners. You can be a good defensive driver and still be polite. If someone is 'stuck', it's nice to be generous and let them cut in front of you. However, if that person cuts you off in an attempt to get ahead of you, you shouldn't let them in.

I know, I know...driving manners are skewered to a driver's preference. Me, personally, I try to be a polite driver but I have no tolerance for rudeness. If you tailgate me, I will slow down and make you go ten miles per hour slower than we were going before. If you try to cut me off, I will speed up to make sure you don't get to do so. If I see you trying to get into a line of cars that's been sitting there a while by taking a 'shortcut', I will not let you in. You have to wait like everyone else. It's amazing how much of a 'code' you develop as a driver, the more years you do it.

Driving in Ohio is different from driving in L.A. There are different 'tricks' here. For example, in L.A., if you're on the freeway and you need to merge over during rush hour, the easiest way to do it is to find a big semi in the lane next to you. When traffic begins to move after being stopped, that semi takes a lot longer to accelerate and thus will leave a gap between it and the car in front. In Ohio, those semi-trucks go on the interstates but rather than the stop-and-go traffic of L.A., the interstates tend to move consistently at 60-75 mph. Unless there's significant space, it's a bad idea to try and cut in front of a semi here because once they get going at 70 mph, they can't stop that quickly.

It's just interesting to see how the manners of driving change in different regions. Since I work close to a college campus, it means cutting through campus to get to work in the mornings. There are rules of driving that pertain to pedestrians and I hold no qualms about admitting that I've made them up myself. Case in point: Students are dumb. I don't care how good their grades are, how many scholarships they earned, what rank in their class they hold: College students are dumb. Every morning as I attempt to weave my way through town while attempting to avoid as many of these students as possible, I inevitably have to pull some tricky driving maneuver to avoid hitting one.

Throughout town, there are a lot of crosswalks. These are clearly marked by horizontal stripes across the road. There's not really even any words to read. Each morning, I see at least one student who decides to cross the road without using a crosswalk. The sad thing is they assume that we drivers are going to know they're just going to walk out into traffic. The sadder part is that nine times out of ten, they choose to jaywalk within ten feet of a crosswalk.

Here's the thing: If I see a crosswalk, I instinctively look to see if there's anyone waiting to cross. If they're waiting, it means the student isn't quite so dumb because they intelligently assume that not all drivers are going to want to stop. So they wait for the ones that do stop. I get a little more irritated with the students who just assume everyone will stop and they just step into the street without looking.

These students are silly. However, they are, at least, using a crosswalk.

The ones I have no patience for are the ones who, as I said, decide to cross the street when there is a crosswalk within glancing distance. Yes, there are times when you need to cross the road and the nearest crossing is a block or two away. Jaywalking is understandable in this situation, provided it's done responsibly. This means looking and making sure it's clear before you cross. Playing Frogger with cars in a small town like this is just stupid. However, if you can see the crossing out of the corner of your eye, it's just plain lazy to not walk towards it and use it to cross. Seriously, it's less than ten feet away.

Of course, I'm not even factoring in the texters/phone-talkers. The phone-talkers are slightly more up on the evolutionary scale than texters although they both rank in the not-so-bright category of street manners. It is possible to talk on the phone AND make sure you don't walk into traffic. If you're so engrossed in your conversation you forget that a car moving at 35 mph will hurt you if it hits you, perhaps you ought to sit down and not move while you finish the conversation. As for the texters...well, those students need a good slap over the head with a shoe. I confess, I have walked and texted. It's easy to do. I just DON'T DO IT WHEN WALKING INTO TRAFFIC.

Sorry. I almost hit one of those yesterdays. He was one of those dopey looking students with the messy hair and tight jeans. He was texting, very focused on his digital conversation when he stepped into the street. My light was green. He had a big "Don't WALK" hand as his traffic signal. I had to stop, suddenly. He blinked at me as though he'd just woken up.

As I said, students are dumb. It means that my Theory of Driving Manners goes out the window when I'm near the campus. It's hard to be polite when you're dodging students who appear out of nowhere.

I digress. As usual. Back to the original topic...manners. I could go on about this for hours since they effect every aspect of life. I'm no Miss Manners but I am a human and I can't help but think there are times when manners should be instinctive. Yet we're all different so maybe I should take that into consideration.

Then again, I've been to the DMV a fair amount this year. Perhaps we're not all human after all.

That would explain so much.

Happy Tuesday.

James Bond in a Small Town...

It's almost Friday. I say almost because it's still Thursday which is the danger day. It's the danger day because it's so close to the weekend that it's very easy to rationalize that it is the weekend. This can range from staying up too late to going out and having fun and then realizing that you still have to get up in the morning for work because, after all, it isn't quite the weekend yet.

You see that in a little college town like the one in which I live. Thursday nights are lively. You see a lot of packs of students bar hopping and dawdling in traffic. Because it's a small town, students seem to think they're immune to being hit by a car, that everyone will stop. Unfortunately, since I've already been rear-ended this year, I can't mow them down like sometimes I'd like to do. The worst ones are the text-messagers. They actually cross the street while trying to text. They don't actually look to see if anything's coming. They get to a crosswork, get wrapped up in their texting and bam! A sometimes too near miss. The really annoying thing is they barely notice that the driver actually has smoke coming from beneath his tires because he had to stop so quickly. That driver almost had a heart attack, the student is to busy LOL'ing or TTYL'ing to notice.

Last night, I actually got to explore the town a bit by having dinner and seeing a movie with some coworkers. It was a lot of fun and considering it's a small town, there's some great places to eat and drink here. I tried a key-lime martini, just for the experience and because it came highly recommended by my coworkers. Well, it tasted like key lime pie in a glass which was the point, I suppose. It even had pie crust crumbs dusted on the glass. Personally, I've decided that key lime pie is better as a pie because it sort of freaked me out a little that I was drinking a pie. Which is strange given that I don't like pumpkin pie but am more than happy to scarf down a pumpkin-pie latte. But then, that has no pie crust in it which is definitely for the best. I do not like crumbs in my drink. It's revolting

I did have the experience of going to a small town movie theatre, something I haven't done in a long time. I just moved from L.A. Not to sound pretentious but, well, it's the lands on which Hollywood sits. This is a fancy way of saying I've been spoiled rotten when it comes to seeing a movie.

This is a classic little place. The concessions seller is the same person as the ticket taker. They just move desks quickly and efficiently to scoop out the popcorn and drinks. I didn't order popcorn because I'd just had sweet potato fries and a hamburger for dinner. (Which, by the way, I could write an entire blog about the deliciosness of sweet potato fries because, frankly, they're a little like crack and once I start, I cannot stop eating them. Not that I've tried crack, in case you were wondering...I just like saying "it's like crack".)

But the popcorn smelled nice which is a bonus. Although, since it was freezing outside, I think it had something to do with the fact that it represented something warm and toasty.

The theatre itself was...tiny. It had a screen that looked half the size of a stadium-style theatre's screen. The floor was sticky and it made that schloup-schloup sound when I lifted my feet. The chairs were wobbly and worn. But I loved it because places like that are so hard to find anymore. I loved it because there were only 12 people in the whole theatre. I loved it because you could hear the whirl of the projector. Mostly, it felt so comfortable and intimate that I knew that it's the type of place I can go to when I just need to escape from reality for a bit and get lost in the fakeness of the movie-world. I can bury myself in a movie, good or bad and duck out from life for a bit.

We saw "Quantum of Solace", the new James Bond. I love Daniel Craig as Bond. I love that hardness to his face, his flintlike eyes, the fact that he can convey emotion through those eyes without having to make a single facial expression. "Casino Royale" was an excellent film; it gave us a new Bond and a far less farcical take on the franchise. Ok, so Pierce Brosnan was nice to look at and he was funny but the movies had become ridiculous, almost spoofing the Bond of the former years.

Mr. Craig plays Bond with grit. His body is lean and hard and scarred. When he gets hurt, he has to clean himself up and he bears the injury for the rest of the movie. He doesn't miraculously escape unscathed in his tuxedo, he climbs out from the rubble, dusty, beaten but ready to fight again.

"Quantum of Solace" is interesting. While "Casino Royale" had great moments of dry and subtle humour, this movie doesn't. Bond is angry and he wants to bury his anger and pain in his work. And he does. A lot. He's ruthless, vicious and very deadly in his rage. I know some people have said this is a boring movie but I have a feeling it's one of those films that will improve on each watching. It's like "The Two Towers" in the Lord of the Rings series or "The Empire Strikes Back"- both were rather boring in some ways but they complete the series of movies and when you see the complete picture that the trilogies painted, those movies became the hinge for the entire set. I can't say it entertained me the way "Casino Royale" did but it was effective. My only complaint is that James Bond gets chased a lot in this one and he does a lot of chasing. In fact, in some ways, the movie is a series of a lot of people chasing each other with some dialogue thrown in. It's effective because it shows us that James Bond really is a human, his anger is for the death of a woman he actually loved but he masks it by being a robotlike-agent, efficient and brutal and wiping out all those who get in his way.

But there's a lot of chasing in this movie. There's a car chase, a rooftop chase of foot, a boat chase, a plane chase, another foot chase in a hotel, another footchase in an opera house, another car chase.....you sort of get the point. I suppose it's symbolic. Mr. Bond is chasing a peace and resolution to his grief and anger. Naturally, because, he's Bond, he wins in the end but he's still a man, chased by shadows and regret and scarred both on his body and in his soul.

To be honest though, I'm still not quite sure what a Quantum of Solace is. I mean, I know how it plays into the movie but I'm a little baffled by why any organization would name themselves that. Wouldn't something like "Circle of Baddies" or "Secret Traitors of the World" be a little easier to say?

Despite that, I enjoyed my evening. I ignored the giant "Twilight" poster in the lobby like a good Monkeypants. I may have irritated one of my coworkers because I snorted with disgust when they showed us a preview of "Angels and Demons" the new Dan Brown adapation. How was I supposed to know she's a huge Dan Brown fan? She loves that book. A lot. It's one of her favourites. Ooops.

But, in truth, it was my first evening out since I moved from the big city to a small town and it was fun. I love having a movie theatre that close, even if it is the size of a postage stamp. I love being able to walk from dinner to the movies, the frost starting to glitter around us, my gloves still in my pockets because somehow I ended up with two right gloves and no left glove (and wearing them upside down just doesn't work right). I love that a town like this changes with the seasons, that the summer will bring long, lazy days with concerts in the park and winter will bring hurried walks from one place to another. It's supposed to snow again today and if it settles as it's supposed to, the town will change again, dusty with snow and telling me that it might be ok to start thinking about Christmas now.

And, at the very least, it gives me an excuse to drink hot chocolate and think about my weekend which is only a day away.

Happy Thursday.