Informal. elegance, grace, or dignity, as in dress and behavior: He may be a slob, but his brother has real class.
I've been realizing for a while now that it seems very few people have any class anymore. And when I say class, I'm referring to the simple, everyday politeness and respectful behavior that seems to have prevailed in previous generations. Not, I must stress, the extremes of class such as an encyclopedic knowledge of French wines. Or a familiarity with cosmopolitan operas from the 19th century forward.
No, I refer to such simple acts of social nicety like refraining from urinating in the parking lot of a place you're going into anyway. As if the place isn't going to have a bathroom in it.
I can see it if there's a long wait to get inside the place. A huge line moving very slowly isn't encouraging for those that have to go NOW. But if its obvious you're going to breeze right in, even if its pretty fucking urgent, a person with class will wait the extra minute and use the facilities therein, not piss all over the door of someone's car.
Speaking of urine. Its called a 'men's room', or 'restroom' or 'bathroom'. Not a 'pisser', 'shitter', or 'the place where I can do coke'.
If you're in a hillbilly bar some where in the sticks, you definitely want to ask where the 'pisser' is because asking for the 'restroom' will probably get you beat up. But for Christ's sake, if you find yourself in an upscale place (even if it features topless women) ask for the men's room. It'll make you seem less like a fucking rube/ghetto rat/white trash/douchebag/fratboy scum.
Respect rules. Every place is different. If you don't like the rules, go somewhere else. Seriously, they'd love to have your business. Don't sit there and grumble, whine and complain. Or even worse, continue to break the rules and get indignant when we enforce them.
Class means you're the type of person who, when faced with this situation, will simply pay their tab and leave. There is seldom only one game in town unless you're in a REALLY SMALL TOWN. If you don't like anything at all about the place, say thank you and go somewhere more to your liking. Its that easy.
Writing this makes me feel like I should be stick my head out my door and yell "Get off my lawn you kids!", which I would gladly do if I had a lawn instead of a fucking public sidewalk outside my apartment.
But from where I stand, it sucks to see the long slow entrophy of simple courtesy from the fronlines.
Maybe I'm biased since I don't often see folks at their best. And I often forget that not everybody had the benefit of being raised by parents and grandparents who were all very old school in the manners department.
But it still seems like such basic behavior to me that it strikes me as almost alien when someone behaves like a total, irrevocable asshole in public, drunk or not.
That's all. I'm out of beer. End of rant. Call me OLD.
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Kill Whitey.
