Respect

Time for a bit of a rant. Stay with me, I have a point.

Kids need to show more respect. Aunts and Uncles should be called Aunt and Uncle, not by their first names alone. Adults should be addressed by their titles - Mister, Misses, Miss, Doctor...whatever. My brother's kids (and I see a growing trend) now call adults Miss or Mister combined with the first name rather than the last. So I'm Miss Susie to his kid's friends. That's fine. It shows that I have a title and therefore I have a bit of authority and am due some respect. If they call me Susie, it puts me on their social level and confuses who should be in charge. I am the adult, therefore, I'm automatically in charge - at least more in charge than the five-year-old.

Commercials should not use curse words to advertise anything period. I saw a commercial for a show on Animal Planet, of all places, that used the F-bomb presumably to show the viewer how exciting the show is. Yes it was bleeped out, but that almost makes it worse. It says, we can say anything we want at any time we want (this was aired at 7:30am - prime preschooler TV time) and it's funny. But it's not funny at all. They can bleep and edit all they want, but it's still obvious what word was missing. The mind fills in the blank automatically. It's like when you see a drawing and there's a little section of line missing, you don't even notice the missing line because your mind knows what goes there and it adds it automatically. How do I know kids pick this up? Because I heard a seven year old kid say "What the...??" 10 times during a church show and afterwords I asked him what he was saying. He was confused and I said, "You said 'what the...' a few times today, but you never finished your sentence. What word were you leaving out?" He said, "Oh, You know. It's a bad word that I'm not supposed to say." OK, he wasn't saying it, but he clearly knew what word was missing - and so did most of the other kids.

I'm sick of slang terms being used by television news anchors. On my local channel the other night, there was a potential hostage situation and instead of the newscaster saying that all available officers we called to the scene he said, "Dispatch dropped a 99" and then had to go back to explain what that was. Was he trying to sound like he knew the lingo and therefore could be trusted? Did he think it was cool to use "cop" words? Did they just need to add time to the story and saying something stupid then explaining it would add the needed 15 or 20 seconds?
After the movie theater shooting in Colorado a CNN reporter informed the world that the suspect had "lawyered up" and was awaiting trial. Seriously? He lawyered up? The nightly news is not a CSI spin-off! I expect my reporters to speak plain and correct English and simply provide the news to me. You are not my friend and you are not telling me your opinion while sitting on my couch eating chips and drinking a beer. You are a professional reporter or newscaster that is supposed to be relaying the facts of any given story to the viewing public.

My point? OK, maybe I just wanted to rant. But I really think the problems of our society all stem from a lack of respect. I say sir and ma'am. I say please and thank you. I don't use slang or curse words when speaking to my elders - for the most part. At least I try not to.  I don't want to hear cursing in public, where little kids can hear it and I certainly don't want to hear little kids cursing.
It all goes back to paying attention to where you are, who's around you, and having respect for yourself and others.

I can guarantee that you are not the only person in the world. There are other people, and what you do, what you say, and how you act, affects those other people.