A few words from your elderly uncle
The Column: 04.07.25
I dropped my glasses in a café in New York and couldn’t find them and a young man got down on his knees and got them out from under a table. I thanked him, but it wasn’t enough. I said, “I really appreciate good manners more than I ever used to.” He said, “I know what you mean.”
There’s a lot of ugliness going around. I’ve never been called “scum” or “sleazebag” that I’m aware of though motorists do sometimes curse us slow pedestrians in rough tones but now that national leadership has embraced these particular terms I suppose the day is coming when TSA personnel will feel free (“Is that your briefcase, white trash?” “Hold your hands over your head, buttface, and stand very still.”) and give us a full-body patdown if we object. Security as an excuse for ugly manners, we’ve seen it before.
Some readers have called my writing “garbage,” but that’s literary criticism and I don’t take it personally. Same with “I used to like your writing back when you were funny”: each person is the judge of funny/unfunny. But “sleazebag” and “scum” deny a person’s humanity, and now that they’re accepted in high places, we are in for a rough ride.
I went through TSA Security in the Richmond, Virginia, airport, Concourse A, and an agent said to me, “Is there a laptop in your briefcase, my friend?” and it was the first time in fifteen years that a TSA person had addressed me that way. And when I pulled the laptop out, he said, “Thank you, brother.” I was stunned. I said, “Your mother brought you up right, my friend.” He said, “Thank you.” At LaGuardia, TSA agents are chosen for their aptitude at yelling orders like prison guards. The theory, I guess, is that rudeness will make a terrorist flinch. I doubt that this is true.
Once at LaGuardia at a self-serve kiosk on Concourse C, I took a chicken salad sandwich and a Heath bar to checkout and couldn’t figure out where to hold the barcode for the code reader and the young woman waiting behind me in line did not say, “Get out of the way, douchebag, and let a normal person in,” no, she showed me how to check out, and I thanked her. I said, “Thanks very much for your help, I appreciate it.” And I meant it.
Sometimes I’ve stood at a counter trying to figure out where to place the credit card chip to make the thing beep and buy me a bag of peanuts, and a line of resentful customers forms behind me but they do not yell, “Step aside, scuzzball” or “Get lost, human sewage,” somebody steps up to take my hand and tap the card and make the transaction. I look him in the eye and say, “That’s very kind of you, sir. Have a nice day.”
Electronics have changed the world we live in. The smartphone comes with dozens of apps, each of them a puzzle, the instructions inscrutable, and it took me ten minutes once to figure out how to click on the flashlight. The laptop computer is so complex you need an M.S. in computer science to figure out all the functions, and when suddenly something goes wrong — your page shrinks to postcard size and the font is 6 pt. Caslon and you cannot, cannot, cannot make it go to 8 ½ x 11 and 24 pt. Perpetua, and you see an 11-year-old nearby and ask for his help and he clicks on Layout and RetroText and Alignment and Dimensional Manifest and Die Grundlagen der Relativität and your screen is back to where you want it, and you thank him and buy him a Fudgsicle — this happens to me often. The laptop holds all the secrets of the universe and I only want to use it as a typewriter and suddenly I’m dependent on a fifth-grader.
Does he look at me and think, “Scumbag. Idiot. Snot rag.”? I hope not. I am old and out of touch, slow afoot, living in the past, but that night in Richmond, doing my stand-up act, by way of demonstrating that we are one country still, I led 400 Virginians in singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “My Girl” and “How Great Thou Art” and “You Are My Sunshine.” They hadn’t done this for a while. They were moved, even the men. I saw a couple men dab at their eyes. This is no small thing.
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Yes, good manners are more important that ever but even more important is kindness. Kindness, empathy, true caring about the well-being of others is what is absent in this administration. A Maryland father sent by mistake to an El Salvador torture prison? Nope. Can't bring him back, nor anyone else we care to grab and send there. Senior citizens, dependent on Social Security lining up at SS offices before dawn to straighten out a problem or give a change of address? Who cares! Fire more staff anyway! A student snatched off the street and flown, before a court order could stop it, to a detention center in Louisiana, all for writing an op-ed in a school newspaper? So what? She was clearly a threat to national security. Children dying in Africa because of slashing to death USAID? Efficiency!
Garrison, I admire how you are able to send your message about the state of the union with gentleness and humor. I wish I could emulate you more. But I can't. I just can't. However, I can - and I certainly try to - be kind and empathetic in my daily life to the people around me, including someone who might drop his glasses under a table or need help with his computer. We can all do that. Small things make a difference. Big things too. Protest on 4/19. I hope to see you all there.
Your article brought tears to my eyes. Despite all the ugly incivility that lives out loud and proud in Trump’s version of America, hearts still beat that love decency, kindness, good memories and the American values of freedom, dignity and the rule of law.