Etiquette

This may or may not be true. I’m writing this based on my recollections. So if any of the individuals involved get offended by my portrayal of them, I apologize in advance.

My family is generally a very courteous bunch. In public we say please and thank you. (In private, this might not always be true.) We hold open doors or strollers or elderly people, etc. I have maintained these habits unto today.

If I get to a door first, I try to hold it open for those behind me. Obviously if there’s a stampede of individuals, I don’t bother. If I see a woman with a stroller or a delivery person with a large load to carry, I hold open doors for them too. (I also get really irritated when these people see me holding open the door but insist on hitting the handicap automatic door opener. It’s like, “Geez! I’m standing here waiting to help you but you don’t trust me?!”)

However, even though I’m all for equality between the sexes, I do find it very gratifying when a guy holds open the door for me. Or even better, when they scramble to hold open the door for me. It just shows some good old fashion politeness/chivalry in my opinion.

Now, let the guy bashing begin. On Friday I went out with 3 of my guy-friends. I was the token chick in the group. That entire night, I don’t remember them holding the door open for me once. Not once! And this is even after I would hold open doors for them! I mean, if we went into a building and there were two sets of doors, I would hold open the first door and let them pass. However, instead of returning the favour, these guys just sauntered through the second set of doors without reciprocating!

To be fair, I do recall that at one set of doors going to the subway, one of the guys did stop to let me go first. We did the awkward, “You go, no you go first” dance and I did end up going ahead of him. It was the double-door incident that made me notice how ungallant these guys were being. I started paying attention afterwards to see if it was just my imagination or if these slights were real.

Again, to be fair, two months ago I was out with two of these same guys for the Just For Laughs festival. I neglected to bring an umbrella and it started to monsoon rain. Luckily it was warm, so I wasn’t overly miserable. One of the guys tried to share his umbrella with me, which was rather pointless in my opinion – I was already soaked, so why make him get partially wet too? He insisted and I gave in for a bit, but we were constantly bumping into each other and once in awhile his umbrella would tilt and send a huge stream of water down my back. Later on that night, again they both tried to share, but I’d either get floods of water down my back or boobs, or the shorter guy would try to take my eyeballs out with the edges of his umbrella.

So if you’re a random guy out there reading this, the message is: The majority of girls still like the door being held open for them!