Luigi de Guzman <
[email protected]> wrote in message news:<
[email protected]>...
>
> >> America bugs me with just how equal everyone seems to be in speech and
> >> address. I don't *want* to be on a first-name basis with everybody.
> >> I am uncomfortable when older people want me to call them by their
> >> first names. It just seems...disrespectful.
> >
> >I think it's a modern thing. It sounds like you feel similarly to my
> >own feelings. I don't like calling older people by their first names.
>
> I'm on last-name basis with some of my best friends; a lot of
> Americans can't seem to tell the difference between *decorum* and
> *intimacy*. One can be intimately decorous in one's manners of
> speech, and detract from neither from his decorum nor the intimacy
> with which he olds the person with whom he is speaking.
Because there's a consciousness of insider/outsider as well as
hierarchy imbedded in the Japanese language, conveying intimacy while
conveying respect is easy to do. It's much harder in English.
> Good on you. There's been a universal surrender to incivility,
> especially where teenage boys are concerned. If we don't insist on
> good manners--at the very least in those spheres of life which we
> ourselves control--then these guys don't get socialized in that habit
> *at all*.
People don't seem to extend themselves in the area of civilizing
teenaged boys, which I think is essential to them becoming young men.
I have played hard ass ***** twice recently in this area. The first
time, the boys were not being malicious, just being boys. It was at
the local shopping center, where they have an antique carosel for
little kids to ride for a quarter. There's a sign on the carosel
saying that it isn't for kids over 100 pounds and not to maltreat it
in about a half dozen ways. The boys were easily over 100 pounds and
they were goofing around with it, pushing it faster than its
mechanical capacity, etc. Adults were sitting there, watching them do
it, some with tots in hand, waiting for them to be done so that the
little ones could ride. I basically, in a jolly fashion, told them to
cut it out, and they in equally good humor cut it out, and got off.
Second time, I was at a park. It was after dark. Some boys were
knocking over the trash cans and spilling the garbage out over the
walk, and then stomping on the trash cans, trying to bend them out of
usuability. I stormed up to them, yelling my head off, telling them
that it was our park, that they had no right to do that, and used, I
confess, a variety of rather colorful language. They laughed, and
proceeded to tip over and crush the second set of cans. Since my
friends thought that my yelling was because my bike was being stolen
(ob bike content!) they came running along. Now that I had
enforcement, three adult males, the boys ran off, laughing, and
scattered.
What I don't understand is why people stand by when teenagers do this
sort of thing. They need to have boundaries set.
Warm Regards,
Claire Petersky
no sig this evening
