Those were the words of my late friend Bill Dalzell, spoken some fifty years ago not long after we had become friends. We met in New York City, where I had recently moved.

I remember many conversations I have had during the entire course of my life more or less verbatim. Not every word, of course, but many important, significant remarks I do remember verbatim.

“You are the politest person I ever met,” he said to me.

I recently wrote, in a eulogy for Bill I wrote last year for posting on this blog, that “He [was] …. in many respects totally unconventional. Was a nonconformist. Yet he was one of the kindest, politest, most civil persons you could hope to meet. He was a true gentleman.”

In writing this, I was not (at that moment) thinking of what Bill said about me.

 

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At the risk being called a purveyor of racial stereotypes, I think it is worth considering that Bill and I both came from similar ethnic/cultural backgrounds: English, Scotch. The civility and good manners of English people struck me on a couple of trips to England. Teaching true courtesy was something important to my parents when I was growing up. For example, the importance of saying please and thank you. Not just words, but showing gratitude and appreciation. Not making importunate or arrogant requests or demands.

Or, to give another example, politeness to strangers and people of all ages, older and younger. And, when greeted by someone you passed on the street, always returning the greeting. I still can’t comprehend why in New York some people don’t bother to do this or neglect to do so intentionally. In the New England of my childhood, one would invariably respond with a “Good morning. How are you today?”

I have close relatives who were brought up the same way. They have either forgotten these principles or can’t see them when manifested in others. They certainly don’t appreciate them.

I have news for them. I haven’t changed. They have. They have become mean, churlish, and uncharitable.

They can’t credit me as Bill once did. They say, incredibly, that I am an inconsiderate, self-centered, boorish person. What we seem to have in this case is an example of psychological projection, where people vent their own frustrations and failings by finding fault with others. They enjoy making me into a sort of Donald Trump caricature and, having built up this false picture in their minds — and, in their view, having “validated” it by sharing stories among themselves in which I am always doing something boorish or offensive (they delight in telling one another such “horror stories”) — they feel validated. It’s a perfect example of people trying to elevate themselves by denigrating others, using stereotypes that have no basis in reality.

Beware of the narrow minded, petty people who think and judge like this; who can’t see or appreciate people as individuals; who have no respect or appreciation for a person’s intrinsic qualities, for their true nature; and who instead try to tar and feather them by ascribing to the object of their hatred and scorn behaviors and opinions that they have made up.

 

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I am still the same polite, considerate person that I was fifty years ago. It’s unlikely that a person would change in such a fundamental matter of character.

 

— Roger W. Smith

June 2019

 

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Addendum:

My eulogy for Bill Dalzell

“William Sage Dalzell (1929-2018)”

is posted on this site at

William Sage Dalzell (1929-2018)

 

 

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Addendum, August 26, 2022:

I should have added that Bill should have known. Politeness was invariable with him.