Beauty vs. Basic Manners

Dinner with an old friend tonight at one of our favourite Italian restaurants; as it had been a hot day, the evening breezes from the sea wafted over our table, giving us that needed relief, sitting outside watching humanity walk along the boulevard.

Because it is the Christmas season, all are out and about, catching up, shopping, dining and simply enjoying the evening.

Once the meal had finished, sat back, glass of wine in hand, listening to my old friend tell me about her new job and her latest marks from University. She is doing well.

My eye wandered across the court yard to see a group of women arrive and sit at a table directly in my line of vision. They were a group of three with a baby carriage. I deduced three generations of women: an older woman about seventy, a lovely head of blond-silver hair and another attractive middle-aged woman, dressed elegantly and fussing over the new born. She looked young for her age, blond, tall and slender. Next to her was her daughter, a blond extremely attractive woman around the age of twenty five. Four generations of stunners, including the new born, truly beautiful women out on a warm summer night.

All three women were dressed casually, bright cotton dresses, styled hair and tasteful make up – men walked by their table and would inappropriately stare, however it seemed they were used to this show of admiration as it did not appear to bother them in the least.

My good friend continued to fill me in on all and sunder, when I noticed the waiter serving the stunner’s their dinner.

When they began to eat and continued to “eat” over the next twenty minutes, I could not believe what I was actually seeing: the most beautiful of the women, the new mother, would stuff as much food in her mouth as humanly possible, then chew and talk at the same time, bits of food escaping her mouth a falling on the plate below. Her mother, the slender attractive and seemingly elegant one, did the same, stuffing too much food in her mouth, chewing and talking at the same time. Grandmother too, would fill her mouth with food, too much food, and chomping with her mouth wide open. It got to the point that I couldn’t look over there because the scene did not make sense: three beautiful women, three generations in fact, eating like drunken sailors after a big night on the town.

Beauty and basic manners do not necessarily exist in the same space, at least in this place, on this almost perfect summer’s evening.