Wanted: Civility

I was in a McDonald's bathroom the other day when I witnessed something strange. Before you jump to conclusions and assume it was an employee actually washing her hands, let me explain. A young girl was following her mother out of a bathroom stall with a jumble of things in her arms. As she tried to juggle her coat, drink, book, etc., her cup slipped out of her hands and landed on the floor. It did have a lid on it, but some sort of grape colored drink still managed to leave a small puddle on the floor. She quickly retrieved the cup, but I found myself, sadly, amazed when her mother went back for a wad of toilet paper to clean up the spill. After all, this was a McDonald's bathroom. What sums up the American way more than not cleaning up after yourself in a McDonald's bathroom? I felt compelled to tell this woman she was a good citizen for cleaning up after her daughter. She may have thought that a strange thing for me to say, but she didn't look foreign to this country, so chances are she understood completely. In another case, I watched a woman in Wal-mart searching for a place to throw away the towelette she had used to sanitize the handle of her shopping cart. I watched her circle all over inside the doors and around the greeter's station looking for the trash can that was actually located right under the stand from which she had plucked the towelette in the first place. It wasn't long before she lost interest in her search and threw the thing right on the floor. No look of guilt. Not even anger, really. She didn't care if anyone saw her, because I was probably staring, quite frankly. She just continued on her way, her thoughts now consumed with how many cucumbers she was supposed to buy. Not to sound like a commencement speech, but one way Webster defines civilization is "progress in education." Is there an antonym? Because I would like to use it to describe the group of people who leave fast food bags in parking lots for others to step on when they get out of their cars or those that seem to have misplaced their old couches in a farmer's field. It seems to be a huge strain on many people to throw away their trash, push their grocery carts ten yards to access a cart corral, or open the other half of a set of double doors (surely you've had the experience of someone barreling an entrance through a door you are using as an exit, even though there is a perfectly functional other half of the doorway). These things are not difficult. Even Clifford is adored for his manners, according to my three-year old's book on the subject. I am perfectly aware that there have always been people lacking common human courtesy, but it seems to me that those people were once referred to as outlaws who would spit on the sidewalk in one second and shoot you in the back the next. I must admit, I don't travel out of the country or back in time, so I can't verify that the same lack of human civility has not always been present or is not the same all over the world. What I do know is that our progress as a civilization seems to be taking the shape of campaigns formed to persuade others to clean up after themselves and signs educating us on how we should behave in public. If we as a "civilization" would adopt some manners, perhaps no one would have to adopt highways anymore.