Where, Oh Where has chivalry gone?

Here's the thing. I'm not a big fan of sitting and waiting in the car for a boy to open my door or waiting on the outside for the same reason. If he gets there first, he can open it. If I get there first, I'll open it. Simple as that. Same with opening doors. If I get to a door, I'll open it. I mean, if he's right behind me and grabs it after I open it, that's totally fine. If he reaches to door before me and opens it, it's cool!

But something that REALLY bothers me is when a girl is carrying something heavy or lots of heavy looking things (i.e. groceries) and many strapping young men walk right on by without even a glance, THAT it not okay.

The story is: The key to Ashley's car broke. They want her to drive down to the dealership so they can give her a new key. Remember the part where the key is broken? I guess they didn't. We were in desperate need of groceries so we decided to go yesterday. We walked down to the trax and hopped on, headed for Smiths. We filled up our little grocery cart with deliciousness and checked out. There were maybe 10 bags total, plus a gallon of milk. After taking all of the bags out of the carts and putting them into our hands, we soon realized how far away the train really was. Our hands full of groceries, we set out for the train.

As we walked, the groceries naturally became heavier and heavier. I kid you not, we passed at least 6 cars with one young man in the drivers seat and an empty car throughout. We had to stop for a few breaks on the way, because our hands were about to fall off. The second we got to the cross walk the red hand came up, the cross traffic light turned green, and our train came. We waited until there were no cars and jay walked... well more jay ran across the street while Ashley yelled, "Hold the train! Hold the train!" Surprisingly, no body held the train. (sarcasm). The next train was scheduled to come 20 minutes later, so we sat in the blazing sun for twenty minutes while our meat and dairy started to warm up. Bad sign.

20 minutes later we were on the train and headed for home. It's about a 20 minutes walk from the train station to our house. Once again, we hadn't realized how far it actually was. As we walked, boys rode by on their bikes, in their cars and on their scooters. When we were at the corner, these two boys walked toward us, just sauntering along, and as they passed we said, "Oh my goodness. These are so heavy!" Nope. Not even a glance.

A car full of well dressed young men was stopped at the cross walk. They stared at us with grim faces, but drove straight on by once the light turned green.

You know, if this had been the olden days... even 30 years ago, a nice young man or two would have stopped by and asked us if we needed help. I guess chivalry is a dying art.