Monday Manners: Getting a Little Old-Fashioned

Most of the time, these columns are intended to just remind you to be better, more polite people. Sometimes, we're downright Twenty-First Century or liberated and progressive. Once in a while, though, we get a little old-fashioned.

Most of my manners hang-up comes from my dad. One thing he'd always make sure of was that, if we were walking down the street (I say "if" because in El Paso, Texas, you do a lot more driving than you do walking), he was always on the outside (street side) of me, or my mother or sisters. Dad wasn't the only man who did this back home, so it was something I'd pretty much grown to expect from men by the time I moved up north to "Yankee Land." Unfortunately, I've come to see that it, along with many rules, doesn't seem to be taught north of the Mason-Dixon line.

It seems like a silly, old-fashioned tradition, but it does have a basis, albeit a defunct one, in practicality. Back in the days of dirt or poorly-bricked roads and horse-drawn carriages, the streets could get a little nasty. Ladies walking on the sidewalk near the street in long, full skirts could find themselves the bearers of all kinds of filth when wet streets flooded onto the sidewalks or when a particularly fast horse splashed through a puddle. Add to that that if a lady were to trip over her long skirt, walking on the outside could mean falling under hooves and wheels. Certainly no more dangerous than falling before an automobile today, but also more likely (how often do you see women in Philly wearing hoop skirts, anyway?). Gentlemen who walked nearer to the street could (a) block most of the mud-and-manure spray and (b) help catch tumbling damsels-in-distress.

These days, streets are paved, animals are (mostly) absent from them, and hemlines are significantly shorter. But that doesn't mean that men shouldn't still at least make an effort to walk on the outside of the sidewalk. Why? Well, for starters, Philly streets don't exactly have the best drainage, and there's still a great risk of getting splashed by cars who don't know how to avoid driving in the gutter. Chances are, your clothing will be a lot easier to clean than your female companion's is. Secondly, we may not still wear floor-length gowns, but modern footwear for women does sometimes make walking just as perilous as it ever was. If a heel breaks or gets stuck between the bricks of one of our lovely sidewalks, some lovely lady might find herself tumbling into the path of an oncoming H3. And you wouldn't want that to happen, would you? There's a third, somewhat related reason, as well. On foliage-shaded sidewalks (of which this city has many), the bricks and cement around the roots of the shade-providing trees tend to be forced up as the trees grow. As most are planted along the outside, rather than the inside, of the sidewalk, this means that the sidewalk is generally flatter the farther you get from the street. Once again, an uneven sidewalk can be perilous for a pair of pumps, and keeping the lady to the inside will mean fewer visits to the cobbler to fix ravished heels at a later date. Believe me, she'll be grateful.

I should mention that there's one real exception to this rule. On particularly broad sidewalks that aren't hurting for subway grates (the sidewalks on Broad Street, appropriately enough, being one such location), gentlemen may, and perhaps should, walk on the inside of the sidewalk rather than the outside, so as to keep the women they are accompanying off the grates as much as possible (the grates tend to be closer to buildings than to the curb). This solves the aforementioned high-heel problem, and also ensures that, if one of you is going to fall through the grate, it's not her.

That may sound selfish, or even a little sexist—but would you really want to be responsible for your lady friend's broken ankle? Besides: in a good pair of men's shoes, you're way more likely to land evenly than she is, with her stilettos on.

Image via www.twainquotes.com.