Manners

Most of you know, if you can’t already tell by my accent and the frequently dropped ya’ll, that I am from the South. Originally South Carolina to be exact. Surprisingly I don’t consider Texas the south, although living outside of Dallas does have some southern charm, I consider Texas just the west. The South in my eyes is THE Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky.

I grew up in church every Wednesday and Sunday, attended a Christian school from 4th grade until my senior year, drank sweet tea, went to cotillion, took shag lessons, attended horse races, went 4- wheeling, mud boggin’, blessed hearts and if I didn’t say yes ma’am, no ma’am, yes sir, no sir, no thank you my heart was the one to be blessed. To this day, I say yes ma’am and the likes out of respect for someone, not because they are older than me.

Often times those adults tell me, nicely, “oh please don’t say that” where I proceed to overly apologize and 5 minutes later am saying yes ma’am to them again. It’s the way I was raised and it is the way we are raising our children. Hearing “yea” come from a child’s mouth when answering an adult makes me cringe. Again, it’s the way I was raised. I often times have to remind our boys (4 year olds) what do you say, but 7 times out of 10 they remember and our just turned 2 year old says yes ma’am. You might actually be a sir she’s answering, but I’ll cut her a little break. Ha!

My point is, no matter if you are teaching your children to say yes ma’am and yes sir or not we should all be teaching our children to use their manners. They are our future. Our future doctors, teachers, military and Presidents. Our world will be left in the palm of their once tiny hands. We should instill in them from an early age that we need to respect every person we come into contact with, no matter their race, gender, religious views, body size or political views.

Until the Missions Continues,

Farabe’