Almost a year ago I wondered what was wrong with the world today, today I wonder again. Again not without reason. Last year it was my annoyance about people not raising the hand when you are being social and are making way for them while driving the car, even when you don’t have to. But only because normal social values make you do the right thing. And you should be entitled to receive the friendly wave to acknowledge that.

Well, we are a year later now and not much seems to have changed. The hand is still frequently not waved… As childhood hero Haye Thomas (a famous Dutch journalist and foreign correspondent) would say, like only he could: Alarming. Today was another incident. Only partly involving me this time, as I was mainly a spectator.

The scene is a local supermarket. I did some shopping for dinner that evening and when arriving at the registers there are two options. A short line with 2 people, where the last woman has her shopping-car more then full with stuff and another line with 3 people with not even half the amount of products then the second woman in the other line, so the choice for me what line to take is clear and easy. So far so good.

Then a young girl appears. Carrying nothing but one single bag of candy. She chooses to stand behind the woman with the fully loaded shopping-car. “Smart move”, I think to myself. With just one product, she will be allowed to go in front. The woman barely started loading out the “truck”, she looks at the girl, girl smiles friendly to her, and… nothing… I am stunned. She looked at the girl and can see she only has one little bag of candy… why won’t she ask her to go ahead?!?!

It’s so amazing little things like this are apparently not seen as normal anymore… Why is that?!?! Lack of basic social skills?! Plain selfishness? It really bothers me. People worry about terrorism, I worry about these things much more. As how can we ever get along in such a selfish world?!

Well, to finish off the story, I drove home, still wondering about it, drove through our street, saw a car coming, gave way… and yes… NO hand!!! I guess this just wasn’t my day! :-)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at 00:28 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.