Incivility Comes to My Little Corner of the World

     A few days ago I posted on the local "nextdoor" website: "I need, as my son said, 'a man with a shovel' to divert the water on my driveway to the side ditches. Any ideas?"

    I probably should have added that this was a paying job, though I thought it was obvious.

    Someone named Amy Templeton, whom I don't know, responded: "Can't your son do it? I see so many women out here expecting the neighbors to bail them out. If you can't handle rural property, or do it yourself please go back to the city."

    How astonishing.

    (1) My son lives in another state.

    (2) I am 80 years old. Am I expected to dig ditches?

    (3) I have lived on this property for 50 years. (I built my own house, too, if that is a relevant fact.)

    (4) I didn't come from the city. The only time I have "lived" in a city was when I was at college in Nashville, Tennessee, where I lived on campus and seldom went into town, and again in graduate school in Eugene, Oregon, again more on campus than in town.

    (5) Why would this writer assume that I wouldn't pay my helper?

    However, it is beside the point that Amy Templeton had no idea of those facts, as she couldn't be expected to know them. The point is how rude it was to attack me—any person—in such a way.

    I was taught as a child to treat all people with respect—and, for my parents, that included Black people, which was not always the case in the South, where I grew up (in the boondocks, by the way, Amy, not in the city). I am grateful for that upbringing. I wonder why Amy wasn't taught the same thing. Is she of a generation that weren't taught to be polite? Did she have a harsh upbringing that left her bitter and resentful? Or has a general air of incivility, disrespect, and permission to attack people you don't know permeated so deeply into our society that it touches even those of us who don't live that way?