“Being civil”.

This can mean many things to many people.  During the homogeneous 1950s it was the era’s byline for “towing the line”.  Civility in many aspects is the glue that holds society together.  Recently I read an article about pirate culture.  They enjoyed a public relations victory by having their ilk described as chaotic anarchists (because such lore provoked their victims to just passively hand over the targeted booty without fighting) when actually they employed extremely civil rule sets for all their members to abide. Without the defined rules, their all-to-human selfishness would have caused a breakdown in their system which would have led to their own demise. Alas, modern day America is facing its own demise.  When I write this, I’m not focused on the highly visible incivility at present. Such as shouting during a Presidential address to Congress or taking the limelight away from an award-winning starlet during her acceptance speech.  No, I’m thinking about the seemingly more benign common man and woman of this once great land.

This morning whilst engaged in the ritualistic behavior called “trash day”, I set about busily collecting and sorting garbage from recyclables to then place the categorized corpus in individual sections upon the curb for pick-up.  At this very time, an assorted Rogue’s Gallery of parents had amassed on the street corner adjacent to my own to watch their grammar school-aged kids wait for the school bus.  When I type “watch”, I mean this empirically and literally. Out of the half dozen parents, no one showed evidence of the slightest electrochemically-induced synaptic-arch leading to a cognitive awareness of their children literally destroying my neighbor’s yard.  Kids were running to and fro while screaming (loudly, very loudly).  Throwing items pulled from the landscaping. And playing tag in-between my neighbor’s cars with backpacks full of the prerequisite contraband comprised of PSPs, Comic Books, neglected school books, and the culturally-desensitized presence of a probable Smith & Wesson .45 caliber handgun, all smacking the sides of the parked automobiles.

My existence at the circumference of this prepubescent melee triggered only a couple of sweet-gestured waves from some of the mommy-attendees. The fathers continued discussing their latest purchase of lawn mower or whatever it is “normal” fathers talk about. (Author’s note: long ago I resigned my club membership from this gender-based, liberated sperm-requisite sub-culture after running out of things to discuss within the first 5 minutes of social interface).  So after a 20 second run down of a risk-benefit analysis, I stood and cast the old “stinky eye” to the parental-aggregate locus.  My body language now being fully incorporated into the vibe of the evil eye ninja move obviously lent itself to full effect as some of the uncivil morons took notice.  And what was the end-result, you may ask?  After a brief interlude of uncomfortable silence between the “adults”, the fathers looked at their feet; the mothers spoke in hushed tones while the kids grew more violent and louder in their miniature, pseudo- G-rated version of Nicholas Poussin’s “Rape of the Sabine Women”.

On this very day … I weep for the future.