Manners really matter

I have only been in Chico for just less than three weeks. My fiancé and I relocated here from the Northwest—cold turkey. We had never been to Chico before and what little we knew came from our Internet explorations. Nevertheless, we were ready. We were ready to embrace a new town, a new beginning and most of all, the sun.

One of the reasons why we were attracted to Chico was because we wanted to live in a smaller town with the influence of higher education. We also wanted to live in a beautiful setting where the sun shined and the people reflected the sunny disposition. We craved a sense of community.

A few days after arriving here, we decided to walk around our new neighborhood. We stumbled upon a ginormous (gigantic + enormous = ginormous) truck parked in someone’s driveway; actually it was mostly spilling out onto the sidewalk. A couple of men were talking in front of it.

We walked around the truck and didn’t think much of it. Then one of the men who was sporting a full beard that ZZ Top would have been envious of, piped up, “Hey, sorry about the truck. He’s big.”

I was taken aback as I looked at his young smiling face. We responded, “No problem,” and continued on our way.

After a few seconds I said, “Wow. That was nice of him.” My fiancé quietly stated, “That’s called manners.”

As a former school teacher, I have experienced how manners and a sense of ethics are the first things to leave children, because we have failed to teach them such and hold steadfast to what we know is true.

My experience thus far has been that the people who reside in Chico are friendly, helpful and considerate. Will this always be the case? Probably not—I may be idealistic, but I’m not naïve. I will say that I do pick up on manners because in this go-go-go world we have created we have forgotten that our most vital commodity is our relationship to one another.

So whenever those bigger cities tout that they have more to offer than you, dear Chico, you can say, “Well at least I still have my manners.”