Being Civil

Being Civil

As a writer, I have to deal with time. Time and time again, I am asked to do things on a very clear schedule. Drafts are due, copyedited manuscripts need to be turned in, covers approved. Sometimes, I think people imagine writers as these slightly drunken creative types, who write solely in cafes. One, at a reading, a woman kept staring at me as I waited for the crowd to develop. Finally, I said, “Hello.”

She laughed and said, “You aren’t drunk!”

I guess I should be glad she noticed.

My mother raised me to be on time. Her mother raised her the same way. Actually, I think my grandmother raised my mother and at least one of my uncles to verge on early. Now, I might categorize this early arrival tendency as neurosis, but when I was growing up, arriving on time in clean clothes and with smiles on our faces was what was to be expected. We left for wherever we were going in enough time that we would be able to explore restaurant booths, waiting rooms, airports, friend’s front lawns before the party started, the plane left, the company arrived. We were early and ready to go and always waiting for a friend, doctor, or pilot.

“Time to go!” she would call out to us. “Have you gone tinkle?”

We never had gone, and then she would wait for us at the front door, purse in hand. This was back before the time of cell phones or even pay phones, so unexpected tardiness caused great alarm and then much apologizing once we arrived at our destination.

“The traffic was so awful,” she would say. “I am so sorry.”

But I am making up this little scene because I don’t actually remember ever getting anywhere late.

I’ve been reading a book entitled Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni, who has a good point. So many of us are in a rush. We don’t know our neighbors. We want people out of our way. What we are doing is more important than what others are trying to accomplish, so could you just, for god’s sake, get out of my way? And I am, without question, an impatient person, wanting things to snap into shape, fall into line, and go. Now. Like yesterday.

Pre-pandemic, when I actually went places, my behavior was often uncivil. In general, I’m always on time — one of Forni’s tenets of civility is honoring another’s time shows respect of the deepest nature — but I am generally subconsciously tapping my foot as others pay for their goods at a store. I can barely stand waiting for someone to get in and then out of the restroom at the movies.

“What is going on in there?” I want to yell out. “For god’s sake. Did you fall in?”

In my car, I’m often carrying on long dialogues of a slightly vulgar nature with fellow travelers during traffic imbroglios. I’m curt and don’t make eye contact sometimes with my checker at stores, and, at times, don’t say thank you when I feel someone has been rude but gives me what I’ve been asking for anyway.

I don’t want to be rude, but sometimes, I feel that the world around me has forced me to grow an exoskeleton to avoid the slings and arrows of every day living. We all have places to go and things to do and we have to get there an hour ago. BART, the subway, the Metro, the El are crowded, the freeways packed, the buses smell of humans and the floors are sticky.

Did I already ask you to get out of my way?

But more often as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that the world is a give and take venture. We get what we give. We throw something out; the world tosses it back to us like a softball. Or like a fastball. Wham, right in the kisser. Yes, this is old wisdom that we’ve all forgotten. So here it is again: We get what we give.

I don’t want to take on the rudeness of the world. I don’t want people to steal my parking spots or flip me off in traffic or honk their horns when I’m walking up hills in Oakland and maybe a smidge off the sidewalk. I want people to be on time and allow me my personal space and say thank you when I’ve done something for them.

Every day the last semester I taught in person, I was bowled over by the international students in one of my freshman composition classes, most of them from Korea and Japan. When I was done teaching and was turning around to erase the board or arrange my things in order to leave the classroom, a number of them called out to me, “Thank you.”

When I heard their thanks after the first day of class, I blinked, looked around, wondering who was talking to whom about what. But then another student said, “Thank you, Professor Barksdale.”

Most of my students don’t thank me, except when I do something specific for them, such as writing a letter of recommendation or helping them in an office hour session. Teaching in the classroom, though, is where I feel I am putting my entire being out there, giving them my ideas and my energy for an hour and a half. And before that semester so late into my career, no one student has ever thanked me for my classroom presentation.

The first few days of thanks I just nodded, wondering if it was just a cultural thing, something they have done since childhood. But then I realized that I didn’t care why they thanked me. I just took the words in and accepted them for what they were. Appreciation.

Finally, I learned to say, “Thank you,” or “You’re welcome.”

How civil.

So the big duh of all this give and take discussion, this being civil, is to give it first. I don’t know the specific details of the accounting system in the world, but I know it exists. Give and take. Give and find what you want easily. It is the golden rule in so many cultural and religious traditions that it has to be true.

More importantly, I don’t feel guilty and full of regret after social interactions when I am civil. When I am kind. When I have patience. When I am on time. When I say “Thank you” first.