Society has become rude.

There’s a phrase, “It’s just common courtesy,” no longer rings true. I won’t say everyone is discourteous, but it’s downright scary to see how many people only do things for themselves. My neighborhood is just a thumbnail sketch of this. Nothing earth shattering, but 20 years ago, a lot of this wouldn't have happened.

I live in a middle class neighborhood. Not a ritzy one and not a poor one. Just walking around, it doesn’t take long to see some rudeness manifest itself. Tuesday is garbage day, but because of the Memorial Day holiday, the garbage haulers are a day behind. That is understandable. But something that annoys me is how many people will pile their garbage on the sidewalk, instead of at the end of their driveway. For those of us who walk, we have to either walk in the street or walk in their grass to get around it. We have wide driveways, so it isn’t like they couldn’t put it to the side.

Speaking of sidewalks, it never ceases to amaze me how many people will park over the sidewalk. I’m not talking about guests; these are residents of the houses – we recognize the cars. There was one family who had one of those basketball hoops set up right on the sidewalk, instead of in the driveway. Another person has a camper and it juts out over the sidewalk. It makes walking on the sidewalk difficult.

While I’m on the topic of parking, another issue is the parking on the street. I know in big cities is it just a way of life, but we don’t live in a big city. And we’ve had some heated discussions on our own street when people park in front of the mailboxes and the mail delivery person can’t get to the mailbox and therefore will not deliver the mail. On our court we have 9 houses. Most days we have a minimum of 10 cars in the street. One family won’t park in the driveway. When the subdivision was built in the ‘70s, they didn’t plan for on street parking, so the street gets pretty narrow when there are cars on both sides. Why is this rude you ask? Because of this, the street cleaner has difficulty getting down, and in the winter the snow plow driver can’t clean our street. We don’t get first day service on the snow plowing anyway, and it would be nice to be able to have the court cleaned when it does come down.


Most of the folks around here who walk their dogs do clean up after them. But, there has to be a few…it’s bad enough they don’t, but when it is on the sidewalk, ick.

On one of the streets over, roofers replaced the roof. It was hot and humid yesterday and they looked tired while they were cleaning up. We noticed on our walk that something had blown out of their truck and lay in the street. No one stopped to move it or pick it up whether they were walking or driving. My husband and I checked it out -- it was a tarp that had probably blown out of their truck. He wrapped it around the sign post to get it out of the street and so it wouldn't blow and if the roofers came back, they would see it. I wonder how long it would have stayed there otherwise.

I don’t think most of these folks set out to be rude, but I think society has created this when we no longer consider the other guy. Courtesy just isn’t that common anymore. I think kindess is the exception instead of the norm.