What happened to opening doors for women? To saying hello to our neighbors? The lady who lived in the apartment under me, no matter how many times I’d smile and say hello when I saw her, would just look at me and go on her way. What’s wrong with letting someone in in traffic? I’m sick and tired of rude people, and man, is L.A. full of them. Maybe it’s because I was raised in the South, where people still believe in manners, or because I read a lot of Jane Austen as a young girl, but I believe in common courtesy. I believe in holding elevators and picking things up when people drop them. It’s not being the guy who lays on his horn in traffic as opposed to just driving; if people put as much focus into driving as they do horn blowing, there would probably be less accidents. It seems that manners have gone the way of Shakespeare: will the next generation be as unable to say please and thank you as they are unable to understand the words of The Bard?

As I sat on the beach today, first shivering and finally luxuriating in the early Spring sun, I thought, life doesn’t get much better than this. The sun was out, the beach was almost empty, aside from the wet-suited surfers and a sunning couple a few yards away; dolphins by the dozens, literally, frolicked just off shore. I’d just finished my fist turn face up and had turned so that my blinding white backside could get a little sun; the quick read “beach book” I’d been working on for the last few days was out, and just as the heroine was attempting an escape from a deadly assassin, five teenagers loudly made their way smack dab over to me.

They came across the very large, very empty beach; three girls wearing clothes at least two sizes too small, and two guys, the girls shouting expletives and kicking sand. Now, I’m not one of those people who never use foul language, in fact, I rather enjoy the choice word here and there, but there is a time and place, certainly not as loud as possible on a public beach. Also, before you think I’m reserving my annoyance for teens, just wait. So, there I am, trying to read a not overly dense book, but an interesting one, on the far side are two mothers with their kids, which I was at least ten yards from, and the couple on the other side at about the same distance. The group walks about two feet from me, and one of the ridiculous girls yells, “Here!” Seriously? The brats proceed to entrench themselves, continue yelling, decide to dig a giant hole. I turned back over, put my headphones in, and turned the music up, trying in vain to tune them out, but there they were; sand flying furiously as the hole became a crater. I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled my clothes back over my bikini, threw my stuff back into my backpack. As I pulled up stakes and headed for my car, I also noticed that the couple was gathering their things, glaring at the rude teens. Such behavior really makes you wonder who raised these kids, and if they aren’t learning decent behavior at home, what about school? Since it seems that schools these days aren’t being very effective in most areas, well, can’t we at least have polite uneducated people running around? I know that if I spoke to my parents or teachers the way I’ve head kids speaking to their’s lately, I’d have been in serious trouble. And the shows on kids television now just makes it worse. Having younger step-siblings, I’m occasionally forced to watch such monstrosities as “That’s So Raven,” and I can tell you, the whole “sassy” thing, is just annoying; if I hear “Oh, snap” one more time.

Now, as promised, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened at the same beach, last week I was almost killed, ok, exaggeration, by a group of women’s “sunshade”, one of those giant, ridiculous, wall-less tents. Again, I was minding my own business, when a mom and her little girl plopped themselves down within feet of me. Alright, I said, one kid’s not that bad, she was cute after all. Then a kite came out, and I thought, this could be bad. A two year old loose on the beach with a kite. She kept running right by me, and I had to keep a look out as the kite wasn’t really flying so much as dragging behind her, and I got hit a few times, the mother giving one of those, “Sorry,” insert kid’s name here, “be careful, watch out for other people.” How bout you go fifty yards down the beach where there is literally not a soul. But, alright, in situations such as these, I usually don’t say anything, I’m not a kid hater, I just don’t want them screaming around me when I’m trying to relax. Then, it got worse as their friends arrived, “Oh, our friends are here!” The mother squealed, and I had another, “Seriously?” moment. Two other mothers and three other kids, as you can imagine, schlepped their gear towards me. If you know there are going to be multiple kids and that you’re going to be having loud conversations, just try and isolate yourselves a bit. The kids went everywhere while the oblivious moms attempted, on a windy California day, to erect this sunshade. I looked up to the giant apparatus coming at me and just managed to get out of the way before it took off down the beach. Then I got another, “Sorry, we’ll try not to kill you, haha.” Grown women should know better, and I guess this answers my own question as to who is raising kids that grow up to be rude.

Wow, people, what is going on? Things are out of control. A girl in my dorm when I was in college would get into fights on the phone with her boyfriend, yelling, stomping her feet like a three year old, at all wee hours of the morning, and instead of this going on in her room, she would always decide to have these episodes in the middle of the hall. The same dorm also housed several female athletes who thought they had every right to start each morning blasting gangster rap hours before anyone had class. When asked to perhaps lower the volume until a reasonable hour, they were offended. Then, there’s my favorite personal encounter with road rage. If you have even been to L.A. then you know that for some reason there are practically no left turn signals, so you pretty much always have to run a red light in order to turn left. As I was pulling up to an intersection the light turned yellow, and as I was about to pull to the middle, wait for it to turn red, and then turn left, I saw that there was an extremely frail looking elderly lady making her way very slowly across the intersection, dragging her oxygen tank; there was no way she’d get across in time, so I stopped to wait for the next signal. Out of nowhere, the guy behind me starts screaming and honking, then gets out of his cars and bangs on my car, screaming at me, asking me if I knew what the @!*&# I was doing. I gestured to the woman, just then making it to the other side of the street, I said, “What do you want me to do, run her over?” “Well, you could have pulled up!” Yeah, brilliant, run over the old lady.

People, just be considerate, I’m not sure what’s so difficult about that. Trust me, life is so much better when you just chill as opposed to blowing a gasket. Throw a little good karma your own way by being nice to someone else. I can’t tell you how many times my day has been brightened by some random person just giving me a wave for letting them in during traffic. The world’s a much faster and busier place than it used to be, but a little courtesy still goes a long way.