I’m not going to disclose where or why, but I have been blessed for several years by some charming men, volunteers, old-fashioned gentlemen that just make you want to find your own higher self and respond in kind.
It’s hard to describe these gentlemen, courtesy and old-fashioned manners I suppose, charm from another day and time. You could not drop a piece of paper on the ground without one of them instantly being at your side to retrieve it. You never opened a door, not even a car door, and in today’s world it felt so surreal to park your car and before you could even shut your engine off, there would be a man standing there waiting to help you out.
All in good humor here, but nobody ever helps you out of your car these days except perhaps for a cop… or a carjacker.
I miss them. They’ve been getting older and we’ve been losing them one by one, our crowd of gentlemen shrinking every week. I am oddly bereft, like a golf widow left behind. That’s what my favorite gentlemen told me, he has to quit now so he can play more golf. His game is not as good as it once was and he just needs more time to practice. We both know the truth, but I cheered him on anyway and told him he looked like a famous golfer to me, one I’ve seen on television. In truth I wouldn’t know a famous golfer if I saw one, but I don’t think he minded.
They’re being replaced and in their wake comes the guy with rocker hair from the 1970’s. I know, I know, I’m being shallow and vain and you can’t judge a book by its cover, but he’s always just sitting on a pile of boxes and looking at his phone. If you pass by him too closely, he scowls and pulls out his comb as if you’ve mussed up his hair.
The other one, well, he totally ignores you until the last moment when he suddenly comes up close and gets rather friendly, uncomfortably friendly. Because I can be a total jerk myself sometimes, the last time his finger brushed my arm, I leaned way in and violated his space. He now has a personal space bubble of about 3o feet from me at all times.
The world is changing and I long for another time, another place. I know my old-fashioned gentlemen were rare treasures, even for their day and time, and I know how blessed we’ve been to have them all these years. I miss them all.
The rocker and the friendly one? Well, there are diamonds in the rough and then there are plain old lumps of coal. I thought perhaps I was being too harsh, but the old woman next to me apparently read my mind because she promptly declared, “No, they’re quite hopeless, what a shame.”
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Whenever you need a knight wearing battle-armour, you know who to consult.
I’m that lady-less knight. So I’ve been on active duty for other men rescuing their ladies from distress it seems. What’s in it for me? Money. But that is hardly anything. The best part is I get to kiss them all on the hand! 😀
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LOL! You should start a “rent a knight,” service. Seriously, I think it would be quite fun. People would probably hire you. I would love to be seen walking about the grocery store with a knight nearby. “That’s my knight, I rented him for the day.” It’s a far more glamorous job than the one I have, which basically amounts to being a scullery maid.
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You know that bit about the “government we deserve”?
We have the society we deserve too, sadly.
The other day I was standing in the DMV (it was my third trip in three days). I took a number.
About an hour later, a 93 year old man came in with a walker (I knew his age because his daughter told me after). He hobbled along to a chain nearby and she put a sweater on his shoulders and said they would “only have to wait for a little while”. I went over to the machine and took a new number. I offered my old one to them (my number was almost up).
She thanked me for my kindness and told me that actually they weren’t waiting for the DMV, they only needed to find a place to sit while her husband in the government building next door.
At any rate, little acts of kindness can mean a lot in this world. I didn’t even have to give up my number, but I’m sure it made and impression on the people waiting (and on my children who were with me).
Sometimes the kindness isn’t “little”, and headline news doesn’t cover it, but it gives one more faith in humanity.
I do have to wonder why these sorts of stories don’t make the news as much as the bad stuff though:
Recently a female servicemember lost her life in the act of helping a family escape from a burning building.
They all survived, she did not.
http://www.stripes.com/news/osan-honors-airman-who-died-after-helping-rescue-family-from-fire-1.416556
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Hobbled to a chair, not chain. Heh, wasn’t quite THAT bad! 😀
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Thank you for the link and for the reminder that kindness really does matter. Ha, sometimes I think the DMV was invented just to teach us patience. We tend to complain about waiting in lines, but it can be an opportunity too.
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I just noted this on a public transit bus (and discussed the general theme with a friend). On the bus, filled with local university students, a VERY elderly gentleman got on the packed bus and ended up standing up near the driver for several stops. Finally, it was a young Pakistani woman (a student) who noticed, and gave up her seat for him, and continued to stand until she got to her stop. All of the fellas around her saw it, but ignored it … busily pecking away on their smart phones. Fascinating.
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It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? In this country we’re losing some of those old-fashioned manners. Phones can be a real distraction from human interaction, but I think it goes beyond that. We used to read news papers on the bus, books, but not to the degree that we completely forgot about the world around us.
Sometimes in retail sales, in public service jobs, one of the hardest things to teach young people is basic manners, a bit of formality. I’m laughing here, but we had a girl answering phones in the office where we work and it took the longest time to convince her we had to say, “hello, may I help you,” not “yo,” or “what.”
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“A night in shining armor is simply a man who’s never truly had his metal tested” I read that somewhere and it stuck.
The truth of it all though is that there are still good men in the world. There are still gentlemen. Albeit few, and scattered between those lumps of coal you speak of. There are still men, who have been raised by parents who care about value, tradition, and core beliefs on how men should treat women. The unfortunate reality though, is that women in general, or least largely in part, have given up any set of standards that would attract a gentleman. Until women stand up and declare loudly to the world that they will settle for nothing less than a gentleman, then sadly, men everywhere are going to continue taking the path of least resistance. Why change if he doesn’t need to right?
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Ah yes. Like when all of my husband’s brothers stood up when a young female friend entered the room. BTW, thought I’d send an interesting one to you– https://holdssway.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/the-picture-of-the-gospel/
(Be gentle…)
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Ahhh, yes, I remember when everyone used to stand up when a girl entered the room. How sweet that was.
As to your link, Ha! Be gentle indeed. I will, that’s a rather gentle questioning of what is going on in scripture, how does this apply to our actual lives? I think the analogy is a good one however, Christ really is the husband, the church is His wife. True, the idea of a husband giving His life up for His wife, makes us uncomfortable, but it’s a powerful one, because how can you not respond to such love? Often it is true, often our husbands would do just that, give their lives protecting us if necessary. So by the time we get to “wives respect your husbands” or “wives submit,” we’re looking at a man who would give his very life to protect us. So you know, he can have the bigger piece of chicken. 🙂
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I actually love the analogy, but perhaps it’s easier to see from the perspective of a good marriage?? Anyway, great post on your end, as always.
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I did my best to raise my son to be a gentleman. It seems to have worked… at least his girlfriend mentions him on Facebook in ways that make me proud. J.
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Sigh, you’ve gone and made me all melancholy now. Up here in Canada the Canadian Geese migrate south every year after the harvest. I can recall sitting by the roadside on a cloudy, windy fall day with a chill in the air, watching a flock of geese taking off from a harvested field and thinking how much life was like that.
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Perfect, Paul. It’s just like watching the geese fly away. Melancholy indeed.
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I completely agree with your post! The art of A Gentleman has been lost. Not to mention, when society discusses gentlemen it’s always regarding how they look! Which is why I created my blog! Take a look!
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