Extra-Extra Politeness

I’ve noted in pre­vi­ous post­ings (at least I think I have…) that since we’ve moved here, we’ve noticed a dis­tinct level of polite­ness that is quite dif­fer­ent from the typ­i­cal pub­lic con­duct we saw in Boston. It may be a West Coast ver­sus East Coast thing, or per­haps (as many oth­ers have pointed out) a Cana­dian ver­sus US thing. It could also be due to the fact that Boston is well-known as the rud­est city in Amer­ica (par­tic­u­larly with regard to dri­vers). I’m not sure, as if all rea­sons are cor­rect, per­haps we expe­ri­enced a triple-whammy increase (Boston to not-Boston, East to West, US to Canada) in politeness.

Last year, we weren’t out as much around Christ­mas and New Years. We were both not employed yet, and per­haps not as bold as one even­tu­ally gets when it comes to ven­tur­ing out in bad weather. There­fore, we didn’t get to expe­ri­ence the truly aston­ish­ing behav­ior that is Christ­mas Sea­son Best Behav­ior West-Coast Cana­dian Polite­ness.

I can’t recount any par­tic­u­larly mem­o­rable exam­ples of this, but I am con­stantly see­ing strangers hold­ing doors for one another, nod­ding and wish­ing each other well, cars wait­ing while pedes­tri­ans cross, and hardly honk­ing their horns when some­one is hold­ing up traf­fic. The tellers at the bank are extremely cour­te­ous. The sole excep­tion was a rather curt fel­low who took my photo for some Immi­gra­tion paper­work at the mall today. Still, he wasn’t rude; just not up to the triple (or now, quadruple)-level polite­ness of every­one else.

I won­der if there’s a drop-off in the pub­lic cour­tesy quo­tient in mid-January. Does the Feb­ru­ary Valen­tines Day build-up change this, or is this hol­i­day only intended to be a mod­i­fier of behav­ior between couples?