Who buys 60 dollars worth of fancy deli made dinners and candy with a non-working EBT card and decides to use the "express" line? The two women in front of me tonight. What makes it even more awesome is that this happened at Whole Foods.
dave [email] said at 1:22 PM 02-13-2007: for arguments sake, not that I disagree with you, one might say that the answer to the rhetorical question is the point intended.
abby at school said at 10:49 AM 02-13-2007: boson, you dont mean poor people, do you? i think this occurs in all economic "sects," we just experience the poor people more often as there are way too many of them!
i mean, riding the bus/light rail every day i think i have more experience with poor people than the majority of killoggs. unless there is like a selfless social worker hiding here, or angele.
poor people are like a rainbow. they either thank you for everything, like moving aside a bit, or they thank the bus driver for letting them on the bus, stopping the bus, opening the doors, or they are rough and nearly abusive and demand to see what youre wearing under your coat. snowflakes, dude!
abby at school said at 12:41 PM 02-13-2007: returning to this thought, i hate the endless gratitude of the poor. its so embarrassing. its like they think theyre being genteel as shit when really they just come across like extreme serfs.
abby [email] said at 3:30 PM 02-13-2007: sorry, that was a little venomous, again. what im saying is that only i can make fun of poor people, not parents.
kara [email] said at 4:31 PM 02-13-2007: i dont think dave appreciates your complex and subtextual language usage.
dave, I dont mean that in a bad way so don't get all hissy. I mean it in the way that someone wouldn't appreciate a certain band or something... stuff that you can't really explain without devaluing
boson [email] said at 10:53 AM 02-13-2007: what josh said... I know one too many people who have just enough money that they are constantly in your face but not enough to learn some goddamn manners.
abby at school said at 10:58 AM 02-13-2007: that once normal balance of manners, dignity, and humility was completely destroyed by the me generation, which i believe was the eighties right? the go-go nineties or something?
there was an interesting article in the urbanite (!) about the egalitarian backlash and the return to manners. there are finishing schools popping up in the county and that gets me so cised.
brad [email] said at 3:56 PM 02-13-2007: Many poor people lack manners because they grow up under a poor family structure. Often, the father runs off before the child is even born, not wanting the burden of supporting a kid, which leaves the mother who has trouble even supporting herself very resentful of having children and unable to love them and raise them properly with the black cloud of financial insecurity perpetually over her head. So you could say money is indirectly related to a person's manners. However, there are plenty of people with lots of money and no social graces whatsoever.
abby [email] said at 4:15 PM 02-13-2007: yeah, i would never say that, though. but gosh, couldnt the mother see how raising a respectful child would make her own life easier?
abby [email] said at 4:48 PM 02-13-2007: thats just too.. intangible. even, define "family structure." what youre offering is the simplest answer, but that doesnt make it correct, and i dont really believe that it is.
brad [email] said at 5:08 PM 02-13-2007: All I'm saying is that if a kid is raised by parents who are able to live comfortably and really give the kid the attention and love he/she needs, manners are less of an issue, unless the parents spoil the kid rotten, then the child is likely to be bullish about getting his way and lack manners. I'm still waiting for an explanation of how there could be a direct correlation between income and manners. How does that make sense? You can't buy manners - it's something you're taught or you learn from being around people who have manners themselves.
abby [email] said at 5:16 PM 02-13-2007: i get what youre saying now - but you can see how your initial statement was unfair! a single parent household isnt a "poor structure." my mother raised us three comfortably and attentively, and even meekly and politely, without any male influence. in english 101 we were urged not to make universal statements because they are the easiest to disprove!
and, youd have to be a total pc contrary-ist not to see some correlation between income and manners. rich people are the ones who use all the fucking forks.
brad [email] said at 5:31 PM 02-13-2007: I'm not saying that coming from a good family is the determining factor in whether or not a person has manners. I'm also not saying there needs to be a father figure present for a family to work. I'm just saying that manners are ingrained in you - you don't lose them when you hit hard times.
abby [email] said at 5:33 PM 02-13-2007: ok, so you said "many," not "all." but you still said that absentee fathers equal bad manners, dont pretend you didnt!
brad [email] said at 5:52 PM 02-13-2007: I was just posing that as an example of why poor mothers might fall into despair and raise their children apathetically.
milky [email] said at 6:27 PM 02-13-2007: You're pretty much on the money, Brad. I understand the gist of what you're saying and that's about how it goes.
More or less. The constant in poor families seems to be a single-parent household where one parent is stretched thin. Now whether that parent had manners or not...if there's not enough time to enforce it or follow-up with it because someone is working all the time, well...there it is.
A lot of time the kids grow up without manners just as an act of defiance about _their_ situation, living in a single-parent home, not having another parent to help check out whether the kid is hanging around positive people, etc.
Anyway, just agreeing with you. I had to teach manners doing MHR, I still do it with the adult pop I got at the moment.
abby [email] said at 6:40 PM 02-13-2007: the thought of avoiding poor people for the rest of my life is one of my greatest motivators for academic success.
kara [email] said at 7:52 PM 02-13-2007: on the hypothetical rhetoric money.
but its just a bunch of convoluted explanations that dont really make sense
dave [email] said at 5:06 PM 02-13-2007: I don't think money = manners. I don't see it as a class based issue at all. It's much more of a taught respect and kindness for others. We're not talking about which fork to put where here, just consideration for others.
drew [email] said at 3:58 PM 02-13-2007: i don't know if my experience with poor people matches yours, abby. but if the number of times i've been too poor to afford my Light Rail ticket (and rode anyway) is any indication, i was LIVING poor back when i lived in baltimore.
abby [email] said at 4:13 PM 02-13-2007: what? you fucking rascal. ive arrived at the station with two pockets full of change, my train pulling up, the enormity of time crushing me, and i would stilldrop $3.50 dutifully into the machine thing.
drew [email] said at 9:43 PM 02-13-2007: only got busted once! and boy, it was a ridiculous affair. not a single person on the train missed the chance to publically rebuke me.. all the way to Mt. Washington.
julie [email] said at 9:57 PM 02-13-2007: The express line is based on quantity of purchases, not dollar amount, though, isn't it? I mean, I'm just sayin'. $60 worth of Whole Foods food is like 3 meals and a Save the Baby Seals candy bar.
