Money doesn't buy manners

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

So there you are at the theater, with your family, having spent a couple hundred dollars for the privilege of sitting in the rear of a balcony, now called a mezzanine, because at $55 a seat, mezzanine has a far sweeter sound. The French word is elegant - and also deluding.

But you don't care, because this is a Special Occasion. You're here to relax, to enjoy yourself and become immersed in the performance.

You look around at the audience, at the sea of white faces and think, this is entertainment solely for the privileged. Ordinary people can't afford the theater these days. People who make minimum wage would have to work two days to come here.

You push these thoughts from your head because this is not a night for introspection. This is a night for forgetting about rich and poor, and right and wrong, and fair and unfair. You sit back and wait for the curtain to rise. It does, and you give your mind up to the play. The set is lovely, the music sweet. You listen and you watch.

At first you think the woman in front of you is simply summarizing for her children the story line. You assume her leaning over and whispering to the child on her right, who then leans over and whispers to the child beside her, is a one-time thing. You forgive her her trespasses. You remember coming to the theater when your children were young.

But it isn't a one-time thing. The woman embarks on a dialogue that continues scene after scene. She's like a sports' announcer, interpreting every word, every move. Her head bobs back and forth. Her body lists. She talks and then child number one talks. On the stage, actors dance and sing, but you don't even see them. You can see nothing but what is going on before your eyes.

What should you do? Should you tap the woman on the shoulder and ask her to please stop talking. This might lead to louder conversation, perhaps to a confrontation.

You don't want to disturb the people around you so you put up with it and silently fume. Finally, her husband motions for her to be quiet. She ignores him, but after the intermission, she is subdued, her commentaries fewer and shorter.

In the meantime, the couple behind you eat Tic-Tacs throughout the play. The chewing is fine. Even the crunching. It's the passing of the box and the shaking that obstruct the little dialogue you're able to hear. You ask your family on the way home later if they were as distracted as you by the people in the audience. They said they were and wondered at their incredible lack of manners.

But there's more to this story.

On the way out of the theater a pretty young woman about to step from the stairs to the floor, turned to a middle-aged man who cut directly in front of her, almost knocking her down, and said, "We've got four inches here between us. But if they're so important to you, by all means, don't let me get in your way."

Another woman, putting on her coat in a crowd, stretched her arm out and hit a woman beside her in the eye. She didn't even apologize. She never acknowledged that her hand had hit anything.

So how do you educate these people? How do you tell strangers when they are obnoxious and rude? The woman who was hit in the eye, turned to her friend and said, "Can you believe that? I must be invisible."

In a world rife with beatings and carjackings and murders and all kinds of unconscionable acts, the very idea of manners is an anachronism. People give each other the finger every day. They curse from their cars. They scream at one another. They not only don't hold doors, they slam them in each other's faces.

And oh how we suffer because of these collective unkindnesses.

"Please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and "I'm sorry" make life so much more pleasant. People who look behind them when they open a door and hold it, if someone else is coming, are appreciated. Audiences who pay attention, who respect what they're watching and the people around them, enhance life.

You would think that the people who can afford to frequent plays would have better manners than people who don't have two nickels to rub together. But you would think wrong.

Because like the word mezzanine, wealth deceives. Manners are taught, not bought. People may be able to afford a play, but that doesn't guarantee they'll know how to act when they get there.