R E S P E C T

I am facebook friends with one of my teachers from elementary and high school.  She’s well up in years, but still active and in relatively good health.  She posted this evening that she would be off line for a short time while she packs and moves from a home into independent living.

I responded to her with good wishes, and called her by her last name in my post.  I just didn’t feel comfortable calling her by her first name, even after almost 50 years have passed since she was my teacher.

It has been that way for me my entire life.  When we moved back to Harper County some years ago, there were several retired teachers of mine still living, and a principal as well.  I could never bring myself to call any of them by their first names at any time for any reason.  It just didn’t seem right to me then, and it still doesn’t seem right to me now.

I wonder if anyone else has this hang up.  I know there is no longer the teacher-pupil relationship, and goodness knows I’m no spring chicken anymore.  I’ve long since raised our kids, and have grandkids in school.  But for some reason…

I suppose it has something to do with an ingrained sense of “oughtness” that makes me do it.  It also could be the continuing respect I have for these people who gave up the best years of their lives so I could have an education and make something of myself.  Or it could be that nagging thing in the back of my head that tells me that my mom and dad might just come back from the grave and give me the what-for if I called these people anything besides what I am supposed to call them.

Respect is a multi-faceted thing.  It’s a function of an office, position, or occupation that someone holds.  It’s also a function of ability, competence, and willingness to do.  And it’s a function of the kind of life lived…a life of giving, service, deference, and yes, love for fellow-man.

Respect is earned.  It’s also ingrained into position or office.  And it depends on relationships that either foster a continuing respect, or dampen any ingrained respect one may have for another.

I also tend to call those I don’t know well “sir” or “ma’am.”  I didn’t grow up that way, but developed the habit over the course of time; especially since I spent a lot of my career in business and industry that is primarily female-driven (health care).  It was necessary for me to show respect for those I worked with, and maintain a business-like attitude and demeanor.  That seemed like a good way to foster that kind of relationship.

I don’t know if we’re becoming more crude as some people seem to think or not.  I do know that it never hurts to be respectful and polite.  It never hurts to acknowledge the individual and his or her self-worth.  And it never hurts to continue to show respect long after the relationship changes in some way.

It’s worth considering.

Labor Day

Yesterday was Labor Day.  I think most of us didn’t do much laboring yesterday, at least in the normal sense of the word.  Mostly, we traveled, ate, boated, visited, swam, and any of 83 other things people normally do on a summer holiday.  Laboring was probably rather far from the minds of most of us.

Yet I can recall as a kid that Labor Day was nothing really special.  It was before it was a Monday holiday, but people did get off work to celebrate the day.  We, on the other hand, just did pretty much what we would normally have done had it not been a holiday at all.

Dad did some farming as well as work in plumbing and heating.  Labor Day was a time of working with the irrigation system, herding cattle, springtoothing the wheat ground, or getting the drill ready for yet another planting season.  Sometimes it involved fixing fence, mowing, putting up hay, or moving farm equipment.  Seldom did it mean a day at home with nothing to do.  No, make that “Never did it mean a day at home with nothing to do.”

We labored on Labor Day, the same as we labored on Independence Day, Washington’s Birthday (there was no Presidents Day yet), or Columbus Day.  Oh, we did take time off on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and also took a little time on Memorial Day (Decoration Day back then) to celebrate.

I never, though, thought I was somehow deprived of an indispensible part of life and living.  I may not have enjoyed carrying irrigation pipe through a field of almost ripe milo (we didn’t have center-pivots then…we had to move pipe by hand to the new setting in the field), but I never really thought it was the end of the world.  We were too busy making ends meet to worry much about things like boats, travel, and golf games.

So, whatever you may have done on this Labor Day, and however you may recall your younger days and the holiday, it’s all good, I guess.  We do what we have to do to survive.  We do what we have to do to get to the next day.  Some of us have life pretty much handed to us.  Others of us continue to work for the next day’s provision.

Whatever your lot in life, I suspect that if you’re reading this, you have a better life and outlook on life than many of us did some years ago, and much better than many people of the world have even today.  Because you’re reading this on the Internet…that wondrous, marvelous thing that connects people from all over.  And if you have Internet access, you can’t be very needy…compared to most of the world’s population.