Goofus, Gallant, and G'Alan, Go To Palm Springs

When I was a kid, I spent plenty of time at the doctors office reading 'Goofus and Gallant' in Highlights Magazine, to know right from wrong, and good manners from bad manners. However, I am neither Goofus nor Gallant, I am somewhere in between. Let's say I am G'Alan. Where Goofus would bring his screaming, crying, unruly children onboard an airplane, without any regard to the other paying passengers, Gallant would drive the little bastards to Disney World in his own car. G'Alan, on the other hand would just duct tape their mouths shut, then use the rest of the tape to secure them in their seats for the entire flight. I hate flying on a plane with crying babies and children running up and down the aisle. I already subsidize their education through my taxes, I don't think I should also be sealed up in a large aluminum tube for five hours and subjected to all the horrors of parenthood that I have carefully avoided.

When Goofus is going through a doorway in a public space, he lets go of the door and lets it slam in the face of the little old lady behind him. Gallant, sees the old lady twenty feet away and stands there like a doorman holding it open, while she slowly moves towards the door. G'Alan walks through a door, and if you appear to be healthy, have all your limbs, and are more than five feet away, assumes you are capable of opening and closing your own doors. I now know that not all people agree with me. Last Friday in Palm Springs, I was called out for not holding the door for a perfectly healthy, younger man, who was at least five feet away. As he walked by, he "thanked" me in a sarcastic tone, "for holding the door". I probably lost out on a big tip.

In my final scenario, Goofus is drunk and stumbling around yelling at people for taking his bar stool. Gallant, politely asks all the patrons up and down the bar, if somebody is sitting in the empty bar stool before sitting down. G'Alan, sees an empty bar stool with nothing on the bar in front of it, and sits down, ignoring the drunken asshole ranting about his bar stool being stolen, and orders a vodka/soda, tall, no fruit.