Please/Thank you

 

 

When my daughter Llara took her gap year and went to Germany, she insisted I get an exchange student to keep me company.

Enter Irena. 

Both girls were wonderful but 100% opposites. Irena was dark haired. Llara was blond. When I asked something, Llara would say yes and forget it. Irena would say no and do it quickly.

As for their bedroom . . . people, who saw Llara's room after Irena took up residence, expressed surprise that it had a lovely  wooden floor. Before it had been hidden by clothes and stuff.

"Why do you say please when you ask me to do something?" Irena asked after a couple of weeks. "I really don't have a choice."

I thought about it. The "magic word" had been part of my childhood, the only guarantee that my request had a modicum of success of becoming reality.

However, it was more than that. It was also a recognition that the person receiving my request was an individual worthy of respect. The same with thank you. It expressed appreciation and a recognition for something done.

They (that mystical group of people allegedly all knowing) say that words don't matter. Sticks and stones and all that. They do matter. Things like please and thank you grease the cogs of good communication. 

Now with all the problems in the world, the lies falling from politicians' mouths, please and thank you won't change poverty, climate change, war, inflation. What it can do is make one on one communication a little smoother. Not bad for three syllables.