Man & Boy
crossings and of being generally civil and courteous on the road and everywhere else.”
“And being civil and courteous involves saying ‘cunt’, does it?”
“Kitty!”
“What?”
“Don’t say that anymore. Forget the ‘cunt’. It isn’t relevant anymore. Let’s all pretend that I never said ‘cunt’. Because this is a column about teaching your son the value of politeness at all times and to all people, and if it looks like I go around calling people ‘cunts’ it’s going to make me look like a hypocrite.”
So, this cunt failed to thank me on the zebra crossing and just headed off to go and murder a prostitute, or beat his wife, or nail his nuts to a plank of wood, or whatever the kind of cunt who doesn’t thank people on zebras does with the rest of his day. And I seethed all the way to school, driving too fast as I always do when I’m angry, but frequently hammering on the brakes to allow people to cross at zebras or even not at zebras, or to allow people into traffic queues or to thank people who had stopped to let me in.
“Why are you driving so scarily, Dad?” said Sam, climbing up out of the footwell into which he had fallen after my last furious emergency stop to honk at a person who had done something stupid that I now forget (yes, I mostly put a seatbelt on him, but not always, who do you think I am — Tufty the fucking road safety squirrel?).
“Because I’m angry, Sam. That man should have thanked me when I stopped to let him cross.”
“But don’t you have to stop? Isn’t it the law?”
“Yes, but I interrupted my journey in order to let him pass in front of me and I even gestured to him to walk. How hard would it have been to raise a hand to acknowledge a fellow human? A small act of politeness can improve a person’s whole day, Sam.”
“What if it was a red light? Would he have to thank you for stopping then?”
“No. But, I mean, he could.”
“Even though you hadn’t done anything for him?”
“Sam, don’t argue with me. Thanking people is nice. We are not parcelled out with a fixed number of thank yous at birth which we have to use wisely for fear of wasting them. Thank yous are great. They are lovely to bestow and free of charge. If everyone stops to nod a thank you — like when a door is held open for you going into a department store or someone stands back to let you enter a train ahead of them — then the world will be a better place and there will be no wars or famine or slavery. To be a proper man, a gentleman, then you must always thank people for small things, especially when driving.”
“What if you’re a woman?” said Kitty.
So I explained to her that women never thank anybody for anything. Especially not on the road. If you stop on a narrow street to let the oncoming car through and it’s a woman you will never get a thank you because women have a sense of entitlement, an expectation that men will go out of their way, that prevents them from offering thanks. To thank a man for anything at all feels to a woman like weakness, so they simply won’t do it.
“But that woman thanked you just now,” said Kitty.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. She smiled and raised her hand when you let her in.” “I didn’t see her do that.”
“Was that because you were shouting, ‘Fuck off!’ over your shoulder at the cyclist, Dad?” said Sam.
“So then, let me get this straight, Dad,” said Kitty. “You want Sam to grow up into a man who says thank you to everyone and also expects everyone to say thank you to him but gets so angry when they don’t that he drives like a lunatic, nearly kills his children, shouts rude words at everybody and believes that certain types of people, such as women, never say thank you, because he is so busy shouting out the other window at people on bicycles that he doesn’t notice when they do?”
“Um…”
“Because that’s not good advice, Dad. Don’t listen to him, Sam. That’s the sort of advice you’d get from a…’
“Don’t say it, Kitty!”
“From a c–“
“Kitty!”
“From a really, really horrid person.”
‘Thank yous are lovely to bestow and free of charge. If everyone stops to nod a thank you, there will be no wars or famine or slavery. To be a proper man, you must always
thank people for small things, especially when driving’