Certainly, there is a case to be made for this. Honorifics are basically dead. The idea of agonizing over "Ms." seems quaint because the idea of calling anybody "Mister" or "Missus" or indeed anything other than "Hey, you" has faded away. Go into Abercrombie & Fitch, and the teenage sales clerks read your name off your credit card like you were both going to Riverdale High together.

Of course, the other sort of forced familiarity occurs at The Wrap, where the cashiers take your first name during the order, as if to imply a more "personal" connection to the customer, while staring down at the register during the entire transaction. I have encountered another type of rudeness at this establishment, but one not endemic to restaurants--that of the flip statement inclined to make you feel more comfortable, but which only ends up turning you off. I have often walked in there wearing, along with several others, a tuxedo, to which I always receive the question, asked with a smirk, "Hey, what are you celebrating?" I am tempted, by this point, to answer, "An employee who does his job--now make my burrito."

Maybe today's rudeness is an off-shoot of the culture of protest and action that is a characteristic of the Harvard Square scene. What worked so well for the Vietnam War or civil rights is now applied to everyone's own peccadilloes and fixations. The female pedestrian obviously felt she had the moral high ground to handle me in any way she saw fit since I was a hazard to humanity and therefore deserved no part among society.

Yet rudeness somehow throws a switch in our heads and turns us into people we are not. Suddenly we are screaming, cursing, falling to our knees and waving both extended middle fingers into the air, howling like a beast.

That's the worst thing about the whole exchange on the sidewalk. It brought out a bad side in me. I'm a nice person, damnit, and for this lady not to recognize me as such, for her to treat me as if I were rude, is just too much. I swear, I could have strangled her right then and th--never mind. As you can see, the rudeness is still hovering about me, so you'd best try to avoid me for the next couple of days, particularly if I'm speeding along on the sidewalk. Just don't call me stupid.

George W. Hicks '00 is an economics concentrator in Winthrop House. His columns appear on alternate Fridays.