by Annalyn Andriyenko

Created on: September 13, 2009   Last Updated: September 14, 2009

Back in the old days people dined and dressed with class, dignity, and self assurance. While walking even to the grocery store, women and men dressed up in nice looking dresses, good looking suits and dapper hats. People never had the audacity of going out in public in sweatpants, and pajamas, looking tired and haggard. Although some people think it's a sign of freeness, I find it quite silly.

Sure this is a judgment of others, but manners today have definitely changed into something else. Something that doesn't seem as refined as manners used to be. It's like manners are evolving within each year, each decade, each century. There is an example to this conduct. When I was a little girl, in the early 1990s, I loved to eat cookies while wandering around the house aimlessly. Of course, when guests were around and I was happily munching on my cookie, my mother reprimanded me about it, and made me put it down until our guests were leaving out the door.

And I personally don't think it was because I had a somewhat strict upbringing, it was merely for keeping up appearances for when company came on over. About a couple years ago, I was over at a family's house, one of their guests had a young boy who was around the age of six or seven. He had the cookie routine I used to do, but while there were many people he just couldn't stop eating them! Of course, this isn't all too shocking and it might sound ridiculous, but he kept dropping tons of crumbs on my aunt's floor. He didn't notice but his parents sure did and they said nothing of it.

They totally ignored the fact they were making someone else's carpet soiled. I actually found this quite rude and filthy and even thought to myself "where are people's manners?". How could someone let their child do this, it'll only make the child think it's okey-dokey when they're older. And this is exactly my point, people have become so languid today that they start to lose respect for others. We're not cavemen, we should have proper poise and grace, especially in the company of others, were manners are indeed needed.

I feel like maybe someday down the road people will begin to pick up the old book and bring back what should be here today. But if no one does I feel as though mankind is evolving backwards into the B.C. era, and we don't want to go there now do we?

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