I like to think of traffic duty as an “introduction to chivalry.” Traffic duty is the job of the 6th grade class. In the mornings, donning their sweet reflective vests, these students open car doors for fellow students, wave and wish the driver a good day, and close the door. It’s very charming.
First, I want to make a distinction between how I see chivalry versus good manners.
Manners are (hopefully) learned well before the 6th grade. It’s saying please and thank you, excusing yourself from a table, shaking someone’s hand and looking them in the eye, etc. Manners are reflexive; they were instilled long ago and after enough elbow jabs from parents, they (hopefully again) stuck. Chivalry, which regardless of its roots in Norman Conquest ideals of knighthood, should not be considered gender specific. It is the internalization of manners. It is autonomous, not automatic, politeness. It is traffic duty.
The other morning I was chatting with a 6th grade student on traffic duty. I asked her how it was going, and, while I might be paraphrasing just a little, she said:
It’s good but it can also be hard because I don’t want the parents to think I’m rude because sometimes when I say, have a good day!, they start to say, you too!, but I’ve already started closing the door so it ends up shutting before they finish saying it and it’s like I just slammed the door in their face when they were just being nice, but sometimes I wait and hold the door open but the parents don’t say, you too!, and I’m just standing there, holding up the traffic line, and they’re just like, why is she not closing the door, but most of the time I think they say, you too! so I’ll probably just try to always not slam it in their face.
Whoa.
How do you break it to an eleven year old that they will feel exactly that forever? They, like all of us, will find too many times in a day to ask themselves, was what I just did awkward?
Of course I assured her that no parent would find her rude, but I was a little pleased by the rant. It was endearing, insightful, self-aware, perceptive. It was everything a chivalrous person should be. Simply by virtue of having this flailing spiral of a thought, she proved that she was internalizing her understanding of manners. This was not a knee-jerk nicety; it was perhaps a little too thought out. Minus the overwhelming worry, this is how our young people should be acting: considerately of other people. Count it as a win.
Signing off, the Schoolyard Eagle Eye