Are you serious???

Seriously???   I find myself asking this rhetorical question sometimes to myself, sometimes out loud in general and most commonly of those around me.  Like… Seriously?  You can’t spell school, yet are allowed to homeschool your child.  Seriously? You don’t want to work but want everything handed to you.  Seriously?  You think your child who bullies everyone at school has a heart for God and a future in missions.  Seriously?  Skinny jeans are an adjective not an adverb…you must be skinny BEFORE you put the jeans on; the jeans do NOT magically make you skinny by wearing them.  Seriously, whatever happened to manners?  Two things I see missing from these equations… Brains and manners. That is the conclusion I have come to in response to my own question. Although I might think these things all day every day, I would never dream of saying them out loud…unsolicited anyway.  Now that is not to say that my face does not betray me at times…but the point is that I try.  Here’s a good point…etiquette is knowing not to put your elbows on the dinner table while manners is not pointing it out in front of everyone when your neighbor is practically napping across the dinner table.  I am a southern girl who was raised to have good manners and as much etiquette as my mom could squeeze in in the brief 20 years I was blessed with her in my life…the rest I have had to pick up on my own.  Still, I find daily head shaking examples of mannerless people in the world.  Where did these folks come from?  They didn’t grow up around my Momma because I’m pretty sure she would’ve set them straight…manners only says that you don’t call people out in public, nothing says that you don’t “gently” inform them of the error of their ways.  My Momma liked to call it a “Comin’ to Jesus meetin'”.  You only had those for extreme offenses,but I think some of these school bullies I’ve had to deal with would’ve had an engraved invitation for sure!  Anyway, I hope that we can find a way to get back to some serious manners in our homes before it’s too late.  The rest of the battle involves common sense and integrity among other things…like modesty, can we talk about modesty for second??  My husband and I just got home from Las Vegas recently and since we don’t consider ourselves old, we were out hitting the local hot DJ scenes.  My eyes will never be the same as I am now scarred by the sites of total fashion massacre I was subjected to every night.  OK, seriously?!?  Let me just be the one to tell you (since your friends obviously don’t love you enough to) you probably don’t have the body for that dress, it’s ok; very few people actually do have a body worthy of spandex.  If you wear the spandex dress, you might want to consider full body spanx and for sure forego drinking so that you can concentrate on stomach control exercises and full dress control to avoid any embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions.  If you aren’t this committed to wearing the dress, please opt for a different outfit.  Girls please hear me when I say:  THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SEXY ABOUT A TUMMY PONCH (food baby), in an ill fitting dress with parts of your body hanging out that shouldn’t be wearing it and you so uncomfortable that you can’t stop yanking on the dress.  Modest and classy is actually the most sexy of all.  A girl that gets along with his family and is confident is sexy.  A girl that he thinks about and has to wonder what she is like IS sexy.  I can tell you right now…the girls we saw out in those clubs in Vegas, no one had to wonder what they had, we ALL saw everything they had!  It wasn’t sexy, it was just gross and pathetic.  The guys weren’t flocking around them.  For the first time ever in Vegas, I couldn’t differentiate the clubbing girls from the “working” girls.  SAD!!!  Having a teenage son (and daughter for that matter) in this world is terrifying!  Seriously???   Pull it together people, have some self-respect and for crying out loud PLEASE teach your children what that even means anymore!!!  Thank you that is all. Seriously though, why should this even have to be a conversation?