Minding Manners

I picked up some lunch today at McDonald's, just like the cool kids do. Say what you will about their menu, but you can get some decent food—even salads—there for not a whole lot of money (done in moderation, of course, as the film Super Size Me reminded us all).

McRib season is right around the corner!

Anyhoo, upon placing my order and telling the nice lady "thank you" for ringing me up, she stopped what she was doing and thanked me for thanking her.

"That's the first time a customer has said 'thank you' to me all afternoon," she beamed. She went on to say that many others were too busy talking or texting on their cell phones while ordering to give her their full attention or to even make eye contact, let alone to simply say "thanks."

Saying "please" and "thank you," and saying them often, I have found, go hand in hand. If my parents have taught me anything that has helped me to make friends and to get along with others, it has been instilling in me the value of using these two phrases frequently.

One of my favorite all-time writers is Dave Barry. He's written a lot of laugh-out loud funny things over the years, but one of my favorite statements of his is also one of his most profound:

"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person."

I have found this to be true both when I've been the customer and when I've been the person behind the counter or desk or on the phone trying to help someone.

Good manners, it seems, are still in style. Even at Mickey D's.

The Meat Market

Recently, I chatted with an old friend whom I hadn't seen in some time. As part of our conversation, and in the middle of catching up with each other's lives, I mentioned that I have been participating in an over-30 singles' group for the past couple of years as one of the activities that has helped keep me busy since I had last seen her in our singles ward.

"I don't really like going to those things," was her response. "They're such meat markets!"

Statistically, my friend is not alone in her stance against going to these so-called "meat markets." I recently found out from one of the advisors at one of these aforementioned group activities that there are estimated to be more than 30,000 people in our age group in Davis County alone. Though that number includes inactive members, as well as, presumably, single parents with children who prevent them from participating and people who don't even know that our group exists, it nevertheless still amounts to literally thousands of other people out there somewhere.

In my time with this group, I haven't even met 1,000 new people, let alone 30,000. The number is more like a couple of hundred at most. Of that number, there are between 60 and 70 who, on average, attend our weekly institute classes.

I am certainly no math whiz, but I figure that it all amounts to about .2 percent, or one in 500, of the people who could conceivably belong to this group who actually attend on a regular basis.That's some pretty slim pickings. It's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in that the majority, like my friend, view it as a meat market, too, and therefore decide it is not worth their time or effort. It may be a meat market, but that's where you have to go if you want meat in your diet.

Not coincidentally, my friend also mentioned that she hadn't been on many dates lately and had found it hard to meet new people with her busy schedule.

Conclusions:

1) I am still no math whiz.

2) However you look at things, you have to go where the meat is if meat is what you want. Though the meat market is not as well stocked as it could be, some vegetarians appear to be starving.

With all of this talk of meat, I am suddenly hungry for a McRib.

People Are More Important

The other day, I was working on my laptop at McDonald's - Mickey D's, in case you were not aware, not only has (arguably, I realize) good food but also free Wi-Fi - when I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between a rather frustrated father and his teenage son over on the table adjacent to me.

The situation was basically this: The boy was paying a lot more attention to his iPhone than to his father, to his meal, or to basically anything else going on around him. I don't know if he was texting or playing Angry Birds or what, but he was far more involved in the virtual world than in the real one. The father did not like this. He repeatedly asked his son to put the phone away. Finally, the father said, "People are more important than iPhones."

This is not the kind of wisdom one normally expects to hear at McDonald's or at most any other public place, for that matter. But I feel that it was a profound statement nonetheless.

In my own travels, it has not been uncommon to see a good number of people paying more attention to their iPhones, iPods, iPads, flux capacitors, or what-have-you than to other people, and it usually makes me feel sad for these folks. There are the more-obvious examples of this happening, such as people texting while driving their cars or a couple having a text conversation while sitting right next to each other. There are also the less-obvious examples, which include people sitting alone in a corner, away from the crowd at a social event, texting someone else and essentially giving out the message that "present company" is just not that important. I am also told that there are people who stay up into the wee hours of the morning texting their friends for hours on end.

Don't get me wrong; like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, I love technology, and it has done a great deal to improve all of our lives and the way that we communicate. I'd rather have a text conversation with someone than no conversation at all, or I'd prefer to send out a mass text to, for example, my improv troupe when it would save me the effort of making 30 different phone calls. But texting is something like #15 on my list of preferred communication methods, and I'd much rather have face-to-face interaction with people. Also, the purpose behind texting, for the most part, is with the goal in mind of seeing that person or persons in a face-to-face setting later on.

But Angry White Loner, you say. You send me about as many texts as everyone else does.

To which the AWL replies: That's quite possibly true. How about we meet up face-to-face and discuss it over dinner sometime?  Your treat, of course. ("You," in this case, is a single woman that the AWL wants to get to know by sending random flirty texts.)

Admittedly, if he were Superman, the AWL's kryptonite would be talking to women on the phone; he doesn't deny it. (Speaking of which, the AWL has a ticket to see the new Superman reboot Man of Steel this Saturday, and he wants to get in on the hype. There may very well be a movie review forthcoming.)

At any rate, perhaps that's a topic for another blog post. And perhaps the wise McDonald's father's message was meant for me just as much as it was meant for everyone else. Speaking of whom, if we ever meet again, sir, it will be my privilege to buy you anything you want from the dollar menu.

Your treat, of course.

The Darndest Things

A couple of days ago, I got to spend the bulk of the evening tending my five-year-old nephew Jackson. Spending time with any of my nieces and nephews is always an educational experience, and this was no exception to that rule. Sometimes, they teach me how to take a different look at life from their innocent and unique points-of-view. Many times, they teach me patience and understanding. Almost always, I learn a great appreciation for the great people they are, as well as the people they are becoming.

On this particular Thursday night, I took Jackson to the local McDonald's for dinner, during which he proceeded to burn about 20,000 calories per hour by running and climbing up, down, inside, outside, and around the rocket ship playground. At times, I got exhausted just by watching him.

One of his favorite things to do, and something I had to ask him not to do more than once, was to climb up on the outside of the rocket - the part with no safety net attached to it. I asked him to come down and then talked to him about the dangers of climbing up there.

Five minutes later, I looked back up at the rocket to see he had climbed on the outside yet again.

Me: "Jackson, what did we just talk about?"
Jackson (without missing a beat): "Zombies?"

The funniest part about that response is that is was completely in earnest. You see, Jackson is lately a bit more obsessed with zombies than most five-year-olds. It is a topic that often comes up in his conversations; he's both fascinated and frightened by them.

There's also Uncle Crack.

Uncle Crack is Jackson's imaginary friend. According to Jackson, Uncle Crack is my brother - but also not, somehow, his Dad's (Mike's) brother, as well. He is much like the "Not Me" of the Family Circus comic strips and is usually the one to blame for things that go wrong wherever Jackson goes.

At another point, Jackson approached a little girl playing games on her iTouch and asked if he could have a turn if, he added, "your grandma will let me."

"I'm not her grandmother; I'm her mother," the lady replied defensively.

I also watched with admiration as Jackson instantly made friends with the other kids on the playground - and became the sort of leader of the group. Every few minutes, he could be heard to tell his playmates, "That's my Uncle Paco," and he'd point out where I was sitting to them.

You can learn a lot from a kid. Most of the time, they just want someone to listen to them.

They will want to talk about zombies.