Didn't Your Mother Teach You?!

A number of years ago, in pre-kid days, I was driving down a two-lane street when I noticed that my lane up ahead was blocked by an illegally parked truck. So I signaled to move into the lane to my right. To my surprise, the car on my right didn't slow down to let me in, it actually sped up to come alongside me so I couldn't get into that lane!

When we'd both reached the traffic light up ahead, I rolled down my window and asked the driver of that wayward car if he hadn't seen that I was trying to get into his lane because my lane was blocked by the truck. He said he had. I asked why he hadn't let me in and he asked, "Why should I?"

I was baffled. "Because it would have been the nice thing to do," I said.

His response? "Why should I be nice?"

This guy was in his early twenties, gel in his hair, slave to metrosexual fashion trends. Not that I'm suggesting that his interest in his physical appearance is reflective of his self-centered view of the world, but I am... His buddy in the passenger seat cringed upon hearing what his friend said to me.

All I could think to say back to him was, "Your mother would not be proud of you!"

I know. That sounds like something an old lady would say to some kid trampling all over her geraniums. But that's the first thing that crossed my mind - that somewhere, this young man's moral education had gone awry and it was either his mother's fault or worse, she'd done her best and still he turned out to be morally bankrupt.

As parents, we think about teaching our children manners, basic common courtesy, and right from wrong. Because I might not live to watch Toby and Josie grow up, I think about this sort of thing more than the average parent.

When Toby and Josie don't greet visitors properly, when they don't say "thank you" and "please", when they speak rudely to adults, I can just hear people thinking, "Didn't their mother teach them properly?!"

I even tell the kids that people will think that. I tell them that if they have bad manners or behave badly, people will think they had a bad mother. (This is the passive-aggressive guilt technique that Korean and Jewish parents are famous for.)

For some reason, lessons in manners and basic codes of behavior seem to be the province of mothers, not fathers. I didn't tell that twenty-something driver that his father would be appalled by his behavior. It was his mother I blamed.

Maybe Toby and Josie will be given a pass in this area of their lives. When they burp in public, when they let a door slam into the face of the person behind them instead of holding it open, when they walk into an elevator before the other passengers get off, when they don't use their signal lights in the car, when they don't let pedestrians have the right of way, when they treat shop clerks or waiters with disrespect, when they don't clear their own litter in public eating places... people will whisper to each other, "They don't know any better. You see, their mother died when they were very young." And people will nod their heads knowingly, with sympathy.