Chivalry is not Dead

I write this on Thursday to pre-post on the weekend. Hopefully, I have been enjoying Celtfest since Friday evening, but as I write hits, there is much rain in the forecast. So, depending on the weather, you may expect to see some concert photos next week.

Otherwise, this is a bit of a follow-up to my previous post about hats dating me. (Actually, hats are about the only things dating me at this stage of my life. Women are no longer interested. Such is life. Quelle dommage.)

I was provoked into a continuation of my old norms in new times thoughts when I spotted a youngish couple walking past our yard. If you can believe it, he was walking on the inside of the sidewalk. Oh, the horror of it all!

It is just plain wrong to my sensibilities. Men should walk on the curbside as I always do when I walk with Sue (could be a song: ♫ I Always Do When I Walk With Sue ♬ ). When we turn a corner, I do a little jig to get curbside once again.

I blame my mother for this old-fashioned proclivity. You see, we once encountered my beloved grade 5 teacher and her significant other out for a stroll. Mom was scandalized by the fact that she was curbside and he was inside. I fear that I was young and impressionable enough to be scarred me for life by her visceral reaction to that faux pas.

Mom was born in 1914, when I presume there still would have been some horses on the roads and perhaps not the drainage that we take for granted today. In those times, it was the norm for men to walk curbside to protect their ladies and their finery.  Kind of a Sir Walter Raleigh throwing his coat over a puddle sort of vibe, which, sadly, may have been a myth begun in a novel.

Way earlier than Mom's time, before the age of automobiles, when streets were really messy it would really have been socially de rigueur and chivalrous for men to show their consideration, which may have been one of the few perks to being female in those times. In Mom's day, it was still of some importance to show such consideration to the ladies, but what about now when there are no horses with their concomitant effluence and when streets are well drained?  It really shouldn't be a thing! (Please not that I can use current jargon. Or it that word, thing, passé by now?)

But it is a thing, my thing, and I shall be constrained and doomed to do that outdated, chivalrous, curbside dance until my expiration. It just seems right. Who knows? I might protect her from an errant splash someday although to my dim recollection that hasn't occurred yet.

Oh dear ... I just thought of yet another anachronistic habit — holding doors open for women ...