Are We Losing Our Gentility?

A rant

My Husby and I like to swim.

It keeps us healthy and young.

Or at least healthy.

After a bit of rigorous paddling, we like to sit in the hot tub and visit.

Our local pool facility inevitably has music playing.

Yesterday, shortly after we got in, a catchy tune started.

Catchy.

I started to listen.

The chorus came on.

The background music quit, just as the last line was sung.

A last line that consisted of the words, “What the ****!”

The words were painfully clear.

I looked around at the small children playing near us.

Children to whom the words were just as clear.

“Did you hear that?” I asked my Husby.

He didn't.

The chorus came on a second time.

“What the ****!”

“I can't believe what I'm hearing!” I crawled out of the pool and marched, dripping wet, into the front office.

The song wasn't as loud here, but still discernible.

“Can you guys hear that song?” I demanded.

The two women at the front counter frowned. “I wasn't listening,” one said.

“It's foul!” I said. “And there are little children out there listening to it!”

“Oh, my! We'll change it!” she said.

And she hurriedly did so.

They hadn't chosen the song. They had merely turned on one of the satellite radio stations, thinking that it would have a modicum of decency.

They were obviously wrong.

The experience reminded me of the time, a few months ago, when my Husby and I were eating breakfast at a local 'family' fast-food restaurant.

A young woman a few tables over was talking loudly on her cell phone to her boyfriend.

Or I'm assuming it was her boyfriend.

Some of the one-sided conversation would suggest it . . .

“You're the worst ****ing boyfriend I've ever had!” she said. “What are you ****ing talking about? I can't believe you would ****ing say that to me! How could you ****ing do that to me? Well **** to you too!”

And so the conversation went.

For nearly twenty minutes.

There were families there.

Trying to eat.

Most hurried their children through their meal and packed up and left.

And still, the girl shouted obscenities into her phone.

It turned my stomach.

Finally, we packed up what was left of our breakfast and escaped.

Finding somewhere better to finish.

Thinking of that girl and that song, I can't help but wonder . . .

Have we lost our gentility?

My Dad taught me when I was growing up, that what came out of a person's mouth was a direct reflection of what was going on in that person's brain.

That a person who resorted to obscenities in their conversation simply didn't have the intelligence to converse on a higher plain.

I think of a speech given by a woman named Margaret D. Nadauld:

“The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined.”

We can easily substitute the word 'people' for the word 'woman'.

Have we been concentrating so hard on being tough and independent that we have lost our ability to talk on an intelligent level?

Is this really how we want to be heard expressing ourselves today?
Is that how we want our music, our movies, our conversations, our lives to sound?

And, for goodness sake, can't we think of another word?!

What are your thoughts?