A guy and a girl are sharing a house. She lives on one side, he lives on the other and they share the front and back porches. They work together and are casual friends. She comes home from work one day to find a dead bird on the porch, closer to her side than his. She is tired and is dismayed by the small corpse on her doorstep. She goes knocking on her neighbor's door to see if he has a broom and hopefully, will help her get rid of the bird.
"You have a broom in your closet. You have a dustpan." He responds. "It's for the bird right? You can use your broom to get rid of it."
She leaves, and as she's going to get her broom she realizes that he's already seen the dead bird and simply left it there for her.
She goes back, "You saw the bird? And you just left it there???"
"Well yeah, it's under your window. Your window, your problem."
Is chivalry dead? The story made me wonder. I know that women have demanded equal rights, but we still appreciate good manners. My husband has them. He has never left any small corpses for me to clean up, and with our cat there have been many offerings left outside our door. It's not that I can't handle it, I've always had hunting cats, it's just something unpleasant that he automatically takes care of so that I don't have to. He opens doors for me and carries the heavy packages. I always offer to do my share and more often than not he declines my assistance. These are small gestures that resonate because they show that he cares. Although I must admit, he does them for everyone because he's a good man. He understands the subtle requests for assistance cloaked in innocuous questions by people who don't want to impose on his good graces. He understands that it's not easy for people to ask for help. So he usually pitches right in without forcing them to make the request. It's good manners and it's a nice thing to do for other people. What happened above, well he's usually a very nice guy. It's just that sometimes people don't want to be bothered with helping someone else. People no longer seem to remember that they may need help someday too.
