Words and Thoughts: Decent Etiquette in a Busy World

Hello again, alleged readers!  Last night, as I was preparing to run the lawn mower in the backyard for a little while, I noticed my neighbor had boarded over the 3” x 3” slingshot hole I had sawed into his fence. Without any warning, I was suddenly without a clear vantage point through which to shoot my slingshot into his yard. So what now, Gary, am I supposed to walk all the way over there, jump into the pool, climb up on your raft, and just manually fling my pebble at you; then walk back to my yard, dripping wet? That’s barbaric, Gary. I’m not doing that.

I think this unfortunately highlights a broader issue within our society: a lack of good etiquette and common decency, buoyed by an endemic atrophy of common sense. As such, I’ll be publishing a manifesto soon: “Stav Knudsenen’s Etiquette Manifesto — An everyday guide for those that want to do good etiquette.”

In the meantime, here is the text of the Manifesto, which only lacks the illustrations the published version will have (which are just unlicensed, repurposed Richard Scarry drawings anyway):

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Stav Knudesenen’s Etiquette Manifesto – An everyday guide for those that want to do good etiquette

In this manifesto, I will explain literally everything that you need to do to have people say about you, “Wow, so and so [that’s you!] is always doing such good etiquette everywhere!”

At this point in the Manifesto, there will be a drawing of Mr. Fixit grossly misunderstanding Bananas Gorilla’s request that Mr. Fixit repair Bananas’ mailbox.

Chapter 1 – Throwing out a refrigerator

When throwing out a refrigerator/freezer, you should always take the doors off before putting it to the curb. This is so people don’t think it’s OK to store ice cream in there. Imagine someone walking down the street with a pint of ice cream, and seeing your refrigerator, and then thinking, “I will be able to keep my ice cream safely in this freezer until I want it later.” Taking the doors off let’s everyone know, “This is NOT a safe place for ice cream!” As an added bonus, you can give the doors to local children to play with.

Chapter 2 – How to help a neighbor who is using a ladder

We all know that ladders are dangerous. And when your neighbor gets the bright idea to get up on a ladder to get the golf balls out of his gutter that you’ve been throwing up there, your first instinct may be to push over the ladder to get your neighbor back down to ground level, and out of danger, as expeditiously as possible. Proper etiquette says, however, that you should not do this, as your neighbor may instinctively grab the gutter on his way back to earth, tearing it down in the process. In the event that that occurs, you will have nowhere to throw your golf balls anymore.

Here there will be a drawing of Lowly Worm trying to trade his Apple Car, and a Patek Philippe of dubious origin, for a 1999 JDM Nissan R34, but the seller isn’t having it.

Chapter 3 – Zipper merges

It’s every other vehicle. That’s it. It’s not difficult. Every other vehicle. If you don’t do this, you are horrible.

Conclusion

You are now able to do good etiquette.

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Boy howdy, the world is going to be a much better place once this Manifesto gets published!