Welcome to the first Five Minute Friday writing prompt link-up of March!
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This week’s FMF writing prompt is: POLITE
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.Â
I hold an unpopular opinion: I think we, as a society, have forgotten how to be polite.
Perhaps it started with recent generations of parents who neglected to teach their children the basics of being polite, and sort of spiraled out of control from there as the children grew and became adults and didn’t teach their children today how to be polite.
When my husband and I first moved to the States after raising kids for seven years in South Africa, my South African husband was stunned when he asked someone else’s child a question and they said, “Huh?”
Our son came home from 9th grade one day and told me he got teased for asking, “Pardon?” when he didn’t hear what someone said. I asked him how he responded to the teasing and he stated simply, “I told them, ‘At least my mama taught me right.'” I mean, what can I say?
This past Sunday I was subbing in a kindergarten Sunday school class at church. I passed out a handful of crayons to each child and one little girl announced quite loudly and determinedly, “I want orange!” I walked toward her with the bag of crayons and asked, “Did you mean to say, ‘May I please have an orange crayon?'”
She repeated after me, “May I please have an orange crayon?” After I handed it to her, she grabbed it without any sign of gratitude so I gently suggested, “Would you like to say thank you?”
I could be wrong but I think it’s small interactions like this that, if left unchecked, are the reason we have exacerbated reactions in other areas of life, like road rage, as one example.
A little please and thank you can go a long way.
STOP.
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Join us with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, POLITE, in the link-up below, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment:Â
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In an armed society,
they say that folks are more polite
because the danger is, you see,
that they could find themselves ‘dead’ right
in a severe confrontation
that can escalate too quick,
past where attempted pacification
might really have done the trick.
Now, I don’t know if this is true,
for I am no psychologist,
but I will just say to you
that is seems the very gist
of Christ is that it’s strong, not weak,
to smile, and turn the other cheek.