So like when you go to the QT or the bank or something, and you're leaving just as someone else enters, it's customary
(at least in this part of the country) to just hold the door open for the person who's coming the other way. And that person
usually seems appreciative, and if they don't smile and say thanks, they at least nod and acknowledge that you're being polite.
If it's a good-looking woman, I like to imagine that she finds my ettiquette charming, even though logically I know
that she probably doesn't. And even though I still hold the door open for a guy, the difference is that I don't give a crap
what he thinks about me. But that's all my own neuroses about gender roles. I don't know if everyone thinks that way, or if
just a few people do and no one talks about it. But that's neither here nor there.
The thing is, today I was at the bank and I held the door open for this guy. And he said thanks and all, but something
about the way he said it lacked the proper sincerity and I wondered briefly if we're all just such creatures of habit, and
these little habits so ingrained in our collective psyche, that they're no longer even considered "polite". This guy didn't
care that I took the extra two seconds to hold the door open, and it would have taken more time to let the door close and
slide past him going the other way than to just hold the door for him.
In his day to day life this guy is probably a jerk who doesn't even wave when people let him into traffic and I think
at one point in my life I would have resented having held the door for him, like when you go out of your way for someone and
they treat you like crap. These days I don't care.
