What has happened to social etiquitte in the 21st Century?

I take total responsibility for the demise of social etiquette. Perhaps I shouldn't shoulder this all by myself, but the slippage started with my generation of Americans. I'm a year too old to be a Baby Boomer but way too young to even relate to the generation to which I'm supposed to belong.

My parents raised me to be seen and not heard. That was OK with me because I didn't have to decide what adults were really talking about and I could melt away easily which was all the same to them. Our parents owned us youngsters and if we displeased them, we saw stars. We addressed adults by Mr. and Mrs. or if we didn't know their name it was Sir and M'am. We did not have to be told twice to do something.

We were probably afraid of our parents - not that they were sadistic creatures, but because they established themselves as our authority way before we could ever remember, and they made us accountable to them. Nobody bribed me or cajoled me to do what I was told. The consequences for misbehavior weren't crafted to turn us into spoiled children. Do it or reap the swat aimed at your bottom.

Somewhere around my first year of college I learned that there was a very different sort of kid running around my institution of higher learning. Shockingly, they smoked, drank, took drugs and had sex with anyone they wanted. It was the Age of Aquarius and the place of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. I might have dropped acid and made love, not war, but pretty soon I was married and having babies. I just didn't have time to wear love beads and granny glasses. God forbid I should shuck my bra! Liberating as that sounded, I happened to be nursing someone or other and it wouldn't have been my best look.

Aside from the obvious fact that almost everyone around me was in some sort of free fall while playing at education, I was going to school, working three jobs, taking care of business at home and still calling everybody Mr. or Mrs. There was never any time to despise people over 30-years-old. I was simply too busy to stray far from what I believed to be the norm. Meanwhile, many of my same age were vigorously rejecting everything their parents had stood for. They were energetically rejecting the Vietnam debacle, sitting-in to protest this or that, and doing a few good things too - like marching for freedom and equality. Causes were their reason for living and they didn't go about trying to change things politely either.

Sooner or later, these free thinkers decided to try being swingers. I still remember a party I innocently attended in which we married couples threw our car keys into a basket. Didn't think a thing about it until this disgusting couple, which I named Hot Lips Harry and the Blonde Bombshell, came to collect us so we could skip off to a community playpen. My husband from whom I was soon to be divorced, just guess why, and this odious and slimy couple of swingers branded me the worst sport of the evening. I was still calling people Mr. and Mrs.

Manners we had all recognized as proper etiquette were crumbling like the cliffs above Malibu. Then our group started having children who thought they could call everyone by their first name. Women decided they were now to be recognized as Ms. and women turned enthusiastically to the National Organization of Women. We wanted equality, not a bad thing, but as they pushed forward many felt they needed to grow testicles and a vocabulary of a dockworker...another chunk fell of the etiquette cliff.

The offspring of these now upwardly mobile parents were given far more than a child needs to be happy. At the risk of offending these darlings, parents gave balloon allowances, unlimited freedom and housekeepers who were there to make sure they didn't burn down the house while their two-income parents worked for the boat payment and the three cars they needed in their five car garages. We now had a new generation of kid. These were the latchkey boys and girls who got in trouble at school, but were staunchly defended out of their deserved punishment by parents who came in to save them. Suddenly school teachers and administrators understood that they were no longer the authority, but rather the babysitters and if parents started hollering that a time-out would squash their kid's self esteem, the school personnel bowed and disappeared. The shoe was now on the other foot.

Like their parents before them, they learned early that drugs, booze and sex were fun, and those who began to pay the consequences of early onset alcoholism, drug addiction and HIV positive medical conditions looked for someone to blame. Manners? We don't need no stinkin' rules, so why should we need manners? Now those same youngsters who have come through those pitfalls have inherited a country that is dearly paying for the unprecedented greed and avarice of the past generation, and they are ill equipped to handle it.

The etiquette cliffs have crumbled into the sea and the country is in trouble. And while not everyone slid down the greased slide of perdition and misbehavior, the kids of this generation were raised in a culture where fewer incidences of polite behavior were modeled, so it became more acceptable to curse publicly, toss finger gestures and be generally irresponsible to our fellow man.

Mercifully, the recent downturn in economics is beginning to have a profound effect upon our citizens. Suddenly we remember that our grandparents and great grandparents went through a Depression and pulled the entire country up by their bootstraps. They remember being kinder, gentler and less avaricious. When there isn't enough money to play fast and loose and have it all, people have to look within to find answers. The world crisis is about to create a stronger individual who suddenly sees that Americans can stand up and be counted.

Perhaps we lost our way a couple of generations ago when it came to how we treat our fellow man, but I have the highest of hopes for a return to the morals of a previous age, while insuring that all people are treated equally and with respect.