[DeltAlum]

OK, I'm old fashioned about manners. I still stand when being introduced, or when a woman leaves or comes to a table. I still like to open doors for my wife. I like to act like a gentleman.

I think that it's important to consider how our actions in public (or our childrens) affect others in the same setting. In my mind, it's not OK to make someone else uncomfortable and ruin their experience.

Finally, every generation of American male -- at least up through mine -- was taught that you take your hat off inside and in other circumstances. Call it manners. Call it etiquite. Call it old fashioned. Whatever. Men wearing hats through dinner, inside, when the National Anthem is playing, when they meet a woman, in a movie just drives me crazy.

To many (most) of us "older" men, it's just plain lazy and ill mannered.

((edit))

Oh, what the heck, while I'm on my soap box I may as well really rant. In my opinion, there is no good excuse for using profane language in the public -- which I would define as being around people you don't know. The use of language has liberalized quite a bit in recent years -- but "the public" is not always made up of members of later generations -- and a whole lot of our population is highly offended by bad language.

By the way, I think of this bulletin board as "public."