It has been on ongoing observation, since COVID, just how rude Americans have become. From workplace conversations to articles everywhere, people are asking, “What the heck is going on?” People hide behind the shield of social media to act horribly. Parents and students both often treat teachers poorly; many schools don’t back teachers up.  Nurses are quitting due to hostile patients.  Who could ever work in customer service or airports, the way those poor people are treated? There are 27 theories, including David Brooks’ in the The Atlantic recently.

My own guess is this rude irritability stems from frustration with just about everything: money, politics, wars, weather, disasters, understaffing, social media, homelessness, inhumane prisons, lazy workers just dialing it in, supply chain issues, gas prices, grocery prices, price gouging. How about low-paying jobs plus overpriced housing squeezing workers? Might that make one short-tempered? Ticks ruining our outdoors, COVID ruining our plans anew, floods ruining Vermont’s rivers, overwhelm and loneliness ruining our moods. 

Technology keeps changing so we cannot possibly keep up with it, while the Customer Service we need (a human, please!), to make techy things work, goes ever faster down the flusher. And don’t get me going on the impending A-I Armageddon (call me alarmist). I’m sure you have your own ranklers. You’d have to be living entirely off the grid to not notice. Or on another planet.

David Brooks has a much-quoted theory: “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.”

Of all the triggers, this is to me the gloomiest. The others are enormously complicated and out of our control. But basic human kindness can and must be taught – and learned!

Personally, I have found flight attendants to be far less pleasant, possibly due to ongoing abuse by rude travelers. I’ve noticed little kids being less friendly, maybe due to hours on devices, with masking during their critical developmental years, plus a long stretch of limited interaction with people outside their families. When I meet a friendly child, I’m overjoyed! How’d that kid make it through, I wonder?

Happily, the crime rate has recently dropped. And I’ve been on flights where passengers were remarkably kind to each other despite painful delays – special kudos to the Young People who were very polite indeed. Maybe they’re used to all this adversity?

Those tidbits aside: Come on people. Teach your children well. And, okay, maybe your elders didn’t teach you to be nice, but isn’t it common sense to treat others as you wish to be treated? Teach down! Learn up! Teach up, if you have to.

One role model: Chip Milnor. If you missed it, read Maryellen Apelquist’s lovely paean to Chip on the front page of the August 17th White River Valley Herald. It’s moving in part because Chip is so missed, gone too soon, and in part because his type is so rare these days, it seems. Someone who went routinely out of his way to help others, with no need for accolades, and enjoyed, I suspect, every minute of doing so.  

Chips are an otherworldly breed who inspire awe. One idea for the rest of us: go out of your way to feel good and to relax – in order to be able to be nice. Try it. Make an effort to calm yourself, have fun. Do whatever it takes. Me, I get in water. Sleep. Amuse self. Feel good … to be nice.

My tiny, grass-roots initiative is to spread laffs. Laughter is good for what ails our knockout planet. Make time for your clever friends and shows! Might I suggest taking a posse to “Theater Camp” – our audience was hooting. A blend of Christopher Guest, Ru Paul, and The Office. Perverse premise, lines well delivered, with solid pacing. Go laugh!

In closing, a funny story. I have a friend who’s noticing the first physical limitations of aging. He’s 40-something. That’s when it starts. For the first time in public, he used the steps on the back of his pickup truck. As he fairly skipped up them to impress a boy watching him, the kid said dryly, “I’ve never seen anyone have to use those.”

I’m not certain what my friend thought yet didn’t say in response, but I am sure it was rich. Reminds me of the old gem The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming, when Carl Reiner’s son waxes bratty. A ripsnorter worth renting, if outdated.

Go get yourself the last days of summer. Good laffs to you, good moods, good niceness, and good (Labor) Day.

Ann Aikens has published a darkly humorous book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, available at Vermont shops and Amazon. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. List of shops, email signup for events, and more of her writing at annaikens.com.