What's Happening to our Society Part 2

After I moved to checkout, I thought the clerk there might have a spark of a smile on her face.  She rang me up, gave me my cash and when I thanked her, she said, "Yeah, it's my job ya know. Next lady.

Okay, I know they are busy, they are losing their jobs and life right now seems bleak for them, but whatever happened to civility.  Even in the worst of the depression, my parents said that folks were kind to one another because everyone seemed to be in the same boat.

My take, and my thoughts are meager to be sure, is that we have become a selfish society.  I have thought a lot recently about how would my mother or grandmother, for that matter, react to Facebook?  They were private women.  I told recall my mother sharing her deepest thoughts even when my Dad died, and she loved him so much.  Private feelings were left private.  She would talk to her mother or her sisters, but that would be it.  Today, we tell everyone everything on social media.  Social Media is all about ME.  It's even gotten to the point if what one person thinks is against what another person thinks, then pretty much, no one should think.

Does this society put others first?  Have we been a pampered society?  Have we been helicopter parents for so long, that we have taught our children that they are a special people who should get whatever they want no matter the cost to someone else?




Long ago, when I was a child, my mother took me to a closeout sale at a men's clothing store in Nebraska.  The crowded store swelled with people.  Clerks with pencils stuck behind their ears,  ran more than walked from one end of the store to the other. Shoppers bumped into one another as searched for shirts, socks, or other such item.  An excuse me or an I'm sorry, rolled off the tongue of the offender.  "Pardon me, " my mother said, as she stopped a harried clerk,  "do you have this in blue?"   The clerk sighed slightly and said, "I can look, if you really need blue."  My mother said that she was sorry to trouble the man, but blue was my Father's favorite color and the suit was  for his birthday. "We couldn't afford it otherwise," my mother said apologetically.  The clerk smiled, and said he would check.  He returned in what seemed like to me, a six year child, hours later, with the dark blue suit.  My mother thanked him profusely, and he responded with a, "no problem at all," or something like it.  Then he reached into his pocket and produced a lollipop.  He gave to me, patted my head and turned help another person.  That memory stuck into my head.  Kindness the midst of a rush of people hoping to get something they needed that they might not have gotten otherwise.

Has that time passed never to return? Will it be replaced with something better?

No answers, readers, just questions.