Something C-Mac said in one of his comments Monday struck a chord with me.  I pose the question “What is wrong with getting personal with people?”

I was not born South of the Mason Dixon line, but I like to say that I got there (to Texas) as fast as I could.  I was raised in Texas and while the South has been much maligned for their mistreatment of people (mostly people of color) and rightly so in many cases, there used to be a sense of politeness that I fear has been homogenized out of Southern society.  In this I feel that we have failed to keep the best of our traditions while rejecting the worst.

I know that I may get flamed for bringing this up, but there is a tradition at Texas A&M University (I attended briefly) simply known as “Howdy!”  When I walked across campus my freshman year I was not met with averted glances or ignored completely.  Almost without fail every student I passed would say “Howdy!”  It seems a little thing, but it seems to me those little things are the kinds of things I’m beginning to miss the most as our society and technology increasingly isolates us from one another.  As misanthropic as I can be at times those little things make me think that there is hope for us yet.  A birthday greeting on facebook, a “friend request” from someone you knew years ago, or a random IM conversation with an old friend all of these things usually elicit a smile from me, but I think that sometimes we begin to feel so connected to the people “in our lives” through technology that we overlook all of the people who could be in our lives.  More and more I walk through the store or (God forbid) the mall and fall into the now accepted practice of avoiding eye contact and quickly retreating to my own little world.  Why does it have to be that way?  Didn’t there used to be a saying “There are no strangers, only friends we haven’t met yet?”  I know that there are sick people in this world and I know I don’t necessarily want to be “connected” to them, but I can’t help but feeling that if everyone felt more connected to each other we, collectively, might begin to suppress many of the impulses we are more likely to indulge privately without the intervention of an over reaching government.

Growing up my parents didn’t feel that they had to have their own eyes on me all the time because the other parents in the neighborhood were sure to turn me in for acting a fool as well as to keep an eye on all of us as we rode, ran, and played.  This didn’t happen through osmosis.  It happened because people used to take banana bread to the new neighbor and get to know the people that they came into contact with.  We spent the night with the kid down the street and Mom and Dad were able to watch the kinds of movies they didn’t want to expose us to.  Kids played football in the yard shot each other with Nerf guns (or pointed fingers), built forts with cardboard boxes that disintegrated the next time it rained.  If we were lucky there was someone with some 2×4’s and plywood and a parent who didn’t care that the corner of their back yard housed a ramshackle hut that looked like it was built by a couple of 10 yr olds.  None of this just happened, but it did just happen.  Just by introducing themselves our parents created connections with people they came to trust.  They didn’t always agree idealistically or politically, but shared meals with perfect strangers who became friends.  It seems to me now we have to create excuses to connect to people.  We pre-qualify new friends or romantic interests by checking out their online profiles and gauging their fitness to become part of our circle, and we guard our circles vigilantly.

I am as guilty as anyone of this.  I go to work, I go to school, I go straight home, and often I only physically talk to people if I must.  I know that I am coming off as a bit of a curmudgeon, and as the ranking “old timer” around here I can deal with that.  I’m not trying to say that technology is bad, or that our privacy is something that we should sacrifice, neither am I trying to say “it was so much better back in the good ole days.”  What I am saying is that even in our technological connectedness there is too much distance between us.  I would be willing to bet that everyone who reads this lives within a hundred yards of someone they’ve never said as much as “Howdy!” to.