CFOP – Consideration for Other People

My mother had a unique and characteristic method of passing on values, morals, correct behavior – I am not quite sure how to categorize what she was attempting to do.  She had a library of canned routines that were triggered by the conduct of, first of us boys, and then later by grandchildren.  I theorize that she was utilizing the marketing method of repeated hearings to drive home a point. She was not above turning these chastisements into little ditties.  I do not have fond memories of her educative method, quite the contrary.  I did not see then that the way she delivered these rebukes was practicing CFOP, nor do I now.

One that I found particularly odious was her Big Eye ditty.  This was triggered whenever she felt someone was being greedy, overreaching or… sometimes I was just clueless as to what set her off.  She would do this one in a sing-song voice, practically dancing a jig as she chanted:

Big eye, big eye
Gimme, gimme, gimme
More, more, more
Big eye, big eye

She would repeat this verse two or three or four times. It was not infrequently followed by pithy commentary on the actions of the allegedly guilty party.

St. Louis is a metropolitan island surrounded by a vast ocean of farms, forests and rural areas for many leagues in all directions. As such there are a lot of what they call Hoosiers here, termed Rednecks elsewhere, sailing into St. Louis.  Being Hoosiers/Rednecks they love their 4-wheel drive pickups, the bigger the better.  I mentioned this because I was driving back from the golf course I most often frequent in Columbia, IL on I-255. This particular day I witnessed more than a few instances of discourteous driving – actually very aggressive driving- by folks in these monster 4x4s. However, this discourteous, aggressive driving is certainly not limited to Hoosiers in pickups. I have seen drivers of luxury vehicles acting like they owned the road, cell phone users wandering at 40 mph all over the four or five lanes of the interstates transversing St. Louis, and on and on.  Watching the 4x4s, though, triggered another one of my mother’s canned routines stored in the tortured gyri and sulci of my cerebellum, CFOP – Consideration for Other People.

My mother was prompted to indulge in her CFOP tirade whenever she felt one of us was behaving in less than a gentlemanly manner or not taking other people’s feelings into consideration. She would start by almost screaming CFOP multiple times at the supposedly offending party, ending with by giving the definition of CFOP that we all well knew by heart – Consideration for Other People.  Again, not uncommonly, followed by her pithy comments. I always wondered, “what about CFOP for us?”

Ruminating on overly aggressive driving I realized the need for putting a placard on the dashes of my vehicles: Your job # 1 – Avoid the Idiots

Ruminating about CFOP,  it dawned on me, after having  heard it a zillion and one times, that it  was simply a restatement of the Golden Rule: And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”  ~~ Luke 6:31

As I further pondered on the significance of CFOP, I wondered what sort of world this could be if we all just practiced it consciously and habitually. Wonderful comes to mind.  Alas, though, it seems the world is full of folks whose goal is to take advantage of others, to get whatever edge they can, to get one car less in front of them in an essentially endless line of automobiles. Add in the Big Eye people, the criminals, the power hungry, or folks who just plain do not give a rat’s derriere, the world becomes an overwhelming hopeless place.

The real take away from my ruminations is that I cannot change or affect in any real way the vast majority of suboptimal or just plain reprehensible behavior in this world, but I, personally, can live in the moment and practice CFOP whenever I can… And avoid the idiots.  But you won’t find me dancing any jigs while I do it.

Perhaps those zillion and one repetitions did not all completely fall on rocky ground or amongst the thorns.

And so it goes.

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