Lies and Manners

Everyone lies. That is what prosecutors and interrogators will tell you. People lie to promote themselves, or to cover up their mistakes, or to sell a product or a cause. Some people lie to take unfair advantage of other people. All of those are bad lies. I write a lot of fiction. The fiction is not a lie because there is no deception involved. You know from the outset that I am making up all or part of the story. I also write non-fiction, which I try to make as accurate I can. Some of the things I write are based on facts but contain embellishments or exaggerations. The little white lies we tell to keep from hurting someone’s feelings or to make someone feel better are the most common lies we tell, but embellishments and exaggerations come in a close second. Embellishing a story or exaggerating certain aspects of it are natural things to do. There is no harm intended and no harm done. We are simply adding a little fiction for the sake of entertainment.

A fart in church is never a mere pfft. If the fart produces any sound, it is always a thunderous roar that rattles the windows and turns the pages of the hymnals. It is only by the grace of God that the preacher is able to continue his sermon and that members of the choir are able to hold down their robes. In this case the fart lifted the flatulent person two inches above the seat of his pew. I am presuming that it also roused him from his slumber. He had to have done it in his sleep. A person experiencing the pressure from such an internal storm will invariably sit there holding it back until his eyes bug out. When the bloating becomes unbearable he will walk out of the church as quietly as possible, and he will close the door behind him. After blowing the leaves off the trees outside he will re-enter the church. He will try to make his entrance as innocuous as possible, so as not to disturb the congregation. Normally, he will offer the preacher an embarrassed smile and a little wave of the hand as an apology. The return already tells the preacher it was not his sermon that caused the departure, but the wave and smile are still a nice touch. Those are the rules, and most folks try to abide by them. It was the town drunk who unwittingly violated them in this instance. I have to say unwittingly. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. It is the Christian thing to do. He did not come to church very often, but I find it hard to believe that he would intentionally blow away the reverie of the congregation.

My dad said he thought Mr. Thompson must have been sick drunk the night before. “I’ll bet he had the dry heaves and vowed to come to church today if God got him through the night,” dad said. “He probably woke up this morning with a great resolve to keep his promise to God, but little good comes from such resolutions. You either drive other people nuts while trying to keep your resolution or you feel guilty about breaking it.”

It was not the first time I had heard dad make this statement about resolutions. The other time I heard it was when he broke his resolution to quit smoking. He got grumpy as all hell while trying to keep that resolution. I thought his feelings of guilt were a small price to pay for our peace and well being. After thanking God for making dad break the resolution, I also offered a little prayer for dad’s health. I did not think it was too much to ask.

Part of my preparation for going to bed on the Sunday of the fart was to kneel down and say my prayers. Mom was waiting for me to finish and climb into bed. She listened to my prayers only on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. That was about as long as she could hold on to her religious fervor. I was grateful for the short duration. Too much of a good thing is still too much. I will try to spare you from too much of a good thing by giving you an excerpt rather than the full version of my prayer.

“…Please bless mom and dad, my brother, my sisters and everyone else, except for Jack Tanner.”

“Don’t ask God not to bless Jack,” mom said as she tucked me in.

“But he’s a bully!”

“I know, but asking God not to bless him is like asking God to send him to hell. And you know that’s wrong, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now promise me you won’t do it again.”

I had to promise her. What else could I do? She kissed me good night and turned off the light on her way out. Ah, but I did not have to ask God not to bless Jack. All I had to do was change my prayer a little. I just had to ask God to bless all the “good” people in the world. Since Jack was not good God would know what to do with him. I also decided to please mom by not calling Jack chicken plop, doodoo head, and other bad names. I would give him the finger instead. If you give someone the finger, you have to do it right. You cannot hold three of your fingers down with your thumb while extending your middle finger. People will laugh at you if you do that. The easiest way to learn how to do it right is to slide a pencil down the knuckle side of your middle finger but in front of your other fingers. You then wrap the other fingers around the pencil while leaving the middle finger extended. After you have done this for a while you can dispense with the pencil. Your fingers will remember how it is done, and it becomes very easy to extend your middle finger while leaving your other fingers folded. I had just learned how to do that, and I was pretty good at it. I know mom would not have been pleased with me giving Jack the finger, but it would be a shame to waste such a skill.

The next day I said, “Hey, Jack!” I waited for him to look at me then I flipped him off good and proper. He said he was going to pound me, but he was too slow to catch me. Thinking about it now, I do not suppose Jack was as bad as I thought he was. I cannot say we became friends. What I can say is that he stopped picking on me. So I stopped giving him the finger. I am not sorry about flipping him the bird before that; he deserved it. But I would not want God to send him to hell. Since Jack and his family moved out of town by the time I entered high school I cannot tell you how he turned out.

I know what I just described is not very mannerly. But the puppy pack has its own rules. Learning the more refined etiquette of the adult world is an important part of growing up. Learning those manners and learning the reasons behind them, however, are two entirely different things. Some of them seem rather inconsistent. It is all right to cough or sneeze in public as long as you cover your mouth when you cough and you cover your nose when you sneeze. It is not all right to belch in public even if you cover your mouth with your hand. Nor is it all right to fart in public even if you cover your butt with your hand. I can understand the rule against farting because of the smell, but the rule against belching puzzles me a bit. It is all right to open your mouth wide when singing or laughing, and you do not have to cover your mouth while doing those things. So why are you supposed to cover your mouth when yawning? An open mouth is an open mouth, and yawning is input rather than output.

One thing I can tell you about sneezing is that everyone thinks he or she sneezes harder than the next guy. “My sneezes blow holes in the strongest paper tissues and wave the curtains on the other side of the room, don’t you know?” I understand you are now supposed to cough and sneeze into your sleeve rather than your hand. I do not know about you, but I do not care much for the idea of blowing snot on my sleeve. Most places have a restroom where you can wash your hands. Most places do not have a washing machine where you can wash your shirt. Muslims call the left hand the dirty hand and the right hand the clean hand. Maybe we should do the same. That way we could cough and sneeze into our left hands. The left hand would then be the germ hand and the right hand would be the touching hand. Whatever happened to handkerchiefs and facial tissues? I guess the cover rules are sort of a fall back thing you can do when you are unprepared for the coughing or sneezing.

Although we cannot always figure out why some things are considered polite and others are considered impolite, there are reasons for those rules. Some of those reasons are better than others, and manners have been known to change with circumstances. In the days when people tossed the contents of their bedpans out of their windows a man was supposed to shield the woman by walking between her and the buildings. Taking shit for her was a chivalrous thing to do, and a high value was still placed on chivalry. With modern plumbing there is no longer any reason for a man to do that. Now a man is supposed to walk between the woman and the street in order to protect her from dirt and water kicked up by the cars. Taking dirt and water for her is not as chivalrous, but that is fine with me. Some aspects of chivalry were greatly over-rated. I suppose a charger is now a credit card, and you do not have to be a nobleman to please a woman with your use of it. That, however, falls into the area of romance. I guess I should stick to the subject. The more recent the rule the more likely we are to know the reasons behind it. While it is nice to know the reasons, it is not that important. One of the things about becoming an adult is that you are expected to abide by the rules even if you do not know why. It is the considerate thing to do, and being considerate is the primary rule of all etiquette.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Sep. 29, 2009