The Polite Man At Target… and My Struggle With Feminism

I’m about to reveal something so perverse you may want to hide your kids and gird your loins.

Here it is. Ready?

I’m polite.

To a fault.

Without being asked I’ll give up my seat for those who are older than me (whose numbers are diminishing, by the way).

I handwrite personal thank you notes, not emails, using real paper, and a pen. Then I actually mail them. With a stamp.

I dispense pleases and thank you’s like Tic Tacks. I even have the bad habit of thanking Siri which can start a whole “who’s on first” sort of endless labyrinth of questions and answers. I don’t recommend it.

I let people with only a couple of items go ahead of me in line at the market and I’ve been known to run two blocks to return a lost sock to a barefoot baby in a stroller.

We all do that, right?  No, not really. If it were commonplace it wouldn’t seem like such an anomaly. 

All of this to say, I know what it looks like, I recognize it in others and when it is shown to me — I shower great waterfalls of appreciation when I can. Like now.

The other day in the parking lot at Target — while unloading my overfilled cart (because, hey, it’s Target), I dropped my keys getting into my car.

I was rushing, which as we all know is the silent signal to the Universe that it must step in and slow us down — hence the key drop. Seeing that my hands were full, a lovely gentleman the age of a very expensive bottle of fine wine bent over to help me. I didn’t know he was there and that’s when we bumped heads…and I dumped the entire contents of my purse all over both our feet.

“Owwww!” we exclaimed in unison, laughing and rubbing our heads. He rubbed his own head not mine. In some countries rubbing another’s head makes you as good as married — so we were careful to keep our head rubbing to ourselves.

Luckily, we got distracted because simultaneously, out of my purse poured numerous packs of gum, my poo-poo spray, wallet, fifteen tubes of lipstick and enough spare change to send a kid to Harvard for four years.

Anyway…as he stopped a AA battery that was threatening to roll under my car with his foot, (it was a dead battery from something, I can’t remember what, and I wanted to dispose of the tiny corrosive acid delivery system properly, so naturally it had been living inside my purse like the radioactive cylinder of death that it is) I thanked him profusely for taking the time to help me out. He could have kept walking just like all of the other men and women nearby who were trying not to stare.

That’s when he crossed the line. The line between mere politeness and hard-core chivalry. He opened my car door for me while I awkwardly climbed inside, thanking him over and over like I was afflicted with a severe form of gratitude Tourette’s.

Here’s the thing. I married my husband because he opened my car door for me on our first date — and has every day since. Rain or shine the man opens my car door for me. That cancels out a lot of bad shit in my book. He could have the face of Shrek and smell like a 13-year-old boy’s feet and I would be able to overlook all of that and live with him in wedded bliss — because of the door thing.

Men, being polite to women. Why is that so damn rare these days?

When you watch the old movies, all of the men opened car doors. (As an aside, you cannot find a photo later than 1960 showing a man opening a women’s car door. Seriously. I looked.)

They also lit cigarettes, pulled out chairs and actually stood up when a women entered the room!

The feminist in me used to find all of that demeaning, now I’m not so sure.

I blame women’s lib. I know it’s not a popular position to take, but it’s mine. I can’t blame the men these days. Any man under forty has no idea that the sort of thing like overt acts of respect toward women used to be commonplace. When we burned our bras we also started opening our own doors and pulling out our own chairs, and all of that other stuff — because we could — and the men just followed our lead.

Don’t underpay me or talk down to me, you do that at your own peril, but it’s perfectly fine to hold the door so  it doesn’t slam in my face. I believe those things are mutually exclusive.

I suppose they’re a dying breed from another era. Men like that. My Target parking lot guy certainly was. As for my husband, well, he’s French and they still put women on pedestals made of cheese — and that’s okay by me.

Carry on,
xox