The Good Wife's Guide

[DeltAlum]

RubberSoul wrote:

"you have to consider that men used to believe in putting their ladies on pedestals.....they always opened doors, car doors, pushed in chairs, etc. There are relatively few gentlemen around these days and a lot of it is our own fault."

You know, I miss that. It's something that most fraternity men were particularly good at -- although a lot of us had been brought up that way by our parents, I think it was also because of the way we were expected to treat our house mothers.

One of the two things I remember most vividly at the first Delt dinner I was invited to is that nobody sat down at any table until "Mom" was escorted in and seated by either the chapter or pledge class president. Some chapters who still have house mothers still do it -- otherwise, it's a lost custom. The second thing I remember is sitting at the table after dinner singing the old Fraternity songs.

Guess it's the "romantic" in me.

I will tell you this: any woman I went out with never opened a car or any other door and always walked on the inside of the sidewalk -- away from traffic, was always seated and always entered a room first -- unless it was a darkened empty one.

Sounds pretty trite by today's standards, but damn it felt good to really treat your date well and put her on that pedestal. And, I truly don't think it was a, "You're too fragile to open the door, so let the big strong guy do it." I think is was a way of showing respect. Oh, and make no mistake, all of the women expected it of us -- particularly the sorority women.

I often wondered what my wife, a real campus beauty, saw in me in those early days. I remember now that she told me often that I reminded her of her dad.

My father-in-law still treats my mother-in-law (really any woman) that way. Both college educated (she is an ADPi, he and independent), they raised their family in the era of "the list." I'll bet they would smile if they read it and compare how many things on it that she did. Not all certainly. Maybe not even a majority. But certainly some of them.

And, I think they would bemoan the fact that some of them have gone away.

As I said, expectations were different.