When Trickle-Down Effect of Disrespect Becomes a Flood

September 9, 2018

The Boston Globe

It is early afternoon on a weekday and Katherine and I are leaving the Red Wing in Walpole after enjoying a heaping plate full of fried scallops and clams, which the restaurant cooks to perfection.

Katherine, who is 90 and blind, picks up her white cane and heads for the door. The two of us are making our way toward my car, crossing the narrow parking lot, not at a clip but not at a crawl, when a man in a gray 2016 Toyota, who has just entered the lot, beeps at us.

I should let it go. But I am my father's daughter and he never met an injustice he didn't confront. I hope, as I am getting Katherine settled in my car, that maybe this man has beeped by mistake. This happened to me once. So, walking over to his Toyota, I am more curious than angry.

The man, who is old, is already out of his car. "Excuse me," I say, "But did you mean to beep at me and the woman with the cane?"

"Yuh. I did. You were both in my way," he says, looking me straight in the eye and then walking on past.

I am floored. He had beeped on purpose and he has dismissed me. I see red.

I tell my daughter later that night that at least I didn't call him a string of names. I chose only one. She applauded me for my restraint. But the fact is I was as disrespectful to him as he was to Katherine.

I was in Boston with my 11-year-old granddaughter, Megan, last month. We were walking through the Prudential Center and overheard conversations peppered with words an 11-year-old shouldn't hear. Young people. Old people walking by, talking loud. "Don't worry, Mimi," Megan said. I live in New York. I've heard worse."

Funny. But not funny.

Later that day we were at Eataly, a grocery store/restaurant where you order from a bunch of choices at different stations, then find a seat. Two women were seated at a table for four, which was really two tables for two pushed together, their shopping bags taking up the two empty seats. I approached the women and asked if the seats were taken and they didn't answer. They just huffed and puffed and sighed as they placed their bags on the floor.

Megan's parents teach her to always make room for people. And to make eye contact. And to say please and thank you.

"Thank you," Megan said as she sat down. The two women were in Boston for a medical convention. They wore name tags. Educated women, right? But neither of them turned to this child and said, "You're welcome."

And that's where we are in this country, all of us, like it or not, inundated by and bombarded with disrespect. And unless you never leave your house and watch only the Disney Channel, disrespect, in words and deeds, abounds. On TV, at the movies, on the news, on Facebook and Twitter. Person to person, at meetings, on buses, trains, planes."Can't you read, lady?" a security guard snaps at a young woman at Logan Airport who failed to take off her shoes. The woman slams her shoes onto the conveyor belt. Disrespect is contagious.

Where does it come from? It has always been. But it was lying low, an undesirable attribute tamed by manners and understanding. But now disrespect is in the spotlight, center stage, made legitimate by Donald Trump, the president of the United States, because disrespect is what he speaks and ridicule is his first line of defense.

His most recent display of disrespect?His initial refusal to keep the American flags at the White House at half-staff following the death of Senator John McCain.

Everything trickles down. We are exposed to Donald Trump and his culture of meanness every day. He is a world leader, he is our leader, and by virtue of his rank he not only gives us permission to demean and denigrate, he also encourages this behavior.

Is it any wonder that in a culture where disrespect is legitimized and kindness is seen as weakness, that we have become who we are today?