Chivalry Is Not Dead

Years ago, before my family moved and when I was still going to church on a regular basis, I had several guy friends that I would hang out with on a regular basis with some of my other friends.  Whether we were at church or out somewhere, they would always insist on holding the doors open for the girls.  It was one of those simple little things that I just got kind of used to.  A good guy will hold open the door for the girls to go in first.  That was probably at least three years ago.  Since then I've fallen out of contact with most of them.  The only guy I see on a regular basis is my best friend who's like a younger brother to me and the group of friends that we hang out with doesn't generally actually go out anywhere, though if we do, he grabs the door for us young women.  Being the only guy in our little group, he has to act the gentleman which he does perfectly.  But aside from him, the only guys I see are at work and unless you're some really gorgeous girl or an older woman, you get the doors slammed in your face.

So five days a week, four to eight times a day, I get a door slammed in my face.  It was one of the things I learned fairly early on.  I would see a guy going through the door just ahead of me with another girl in front of me.  A lot of the girls I work with are very pretty and if the guy glanced back and noticed that she was behind him, he would stop and hold the door open for her and then usually be rewarded with a smile and thank you.  And about 99% of the time, no matter how close behind her I was, once she was through the door, he let go.  Or if he was nice, he'd give the door a push out so that I could grab it.  For almost a year now, that's been the majority of my experience with men.  I don't go out unless its to the store which pretty much all have automatic doors and if I'm at a restaurant its with my family and my dad always gets the door for us.

So although I didn't realize it until more recently, over this last year I've gotten to the point where I don't expect anything from men in terms of anything good.  What I do expect is for them not to hold open the door, for them to generally ignore me, for them to make fun of me if they do notice me at best, for them to hit one me or toy with me because they think I'm easy at worst.  Very plainly put, I don't trust men anymore.  Anytime I'm around a guy, other than my close friend, my guard goes way up.  Of course, its not just this last year that made me like that.  I think I could say it started after my ex and I broke up and its just grown since then.

So today as I was leaving work just behind four or five young men, I fully expected them to let the door close in my face despite the fact that I knew at least two of them were aware that I was right behind them.  And sure enough, once they were through the door, the last guy just let it start slamming closed.  What I did not expect was for another guy who I had not seen to grab the door before I could and proceed to open it for me.  What I also did not expect was for him to yell for the guys walking away to come back.  I don't think he knew them and they all seemed a bit perplexed, but once I was through the door he proceeded to give them a good talking to about how to treat women and how they should hold the door open for a woman no matter how old or young, pretty or ugly they thought she was.  I was in absolute shock.  In all my 22 years I had never seen anything like this before.  Once he was done, every one of those young men apologized before leaving.  After the thanking the guy who had stopped them, I started to head to my car.  Before I could go though, he stopped me and told me, "You're a beautiful young lady, no matter what other people say, how they treat you, or even what you think of yourself.  Never forget that."

When I got back to my car I just burst into tears.  No one, certainly no young man had ever done something like that for me.  And as for calling me beautiful?  Aside from family, no guy ever tells me I'm beautiful.  While I'm not saying that this has made me completely change my mind about guys, it made me realize that there are still some decent guys out there.  And don't get me wrong, I do know several Christian guys who are decent and who I'm sure are gentlemen, I just don't ever see them so I don't see that side of them.  Its just nice to know that in a workplace like mine that is so completely worldly and opposed to Christianity and anything remotely related to chivalry or respect, there's at least one young man who's different and isn't afraid to be different.  That is encouraging.