Do you remember the lessons your grandma taught? Be nice and courteous, use your manners, tuck in your shirt, all the polite lessons. Grandmas are great teachers because they have lived and learned how to act best in society.

Times change though, the days of “please”, “thank you” and “you’re welcome” seem numbered due to a lack of common courtesy. Yes, there are those who still exemplify the abnormality of being “courteous” but as demonstrated time and time again, society has become less courteous.

Ask yourself how many times you have been cut off from doing something lately: cut off in traffic, the grocery line, at the bar. Let’s face it, there are a lot of rude people out there. They seem to be getting worse, at least when they are behind the wheel.

“I get cut off a lot in the parking structure at school,” said Endy Ramirez, an 18-year-old math major, “there isn’t enough parking on campus so people get frustrated.”

Issues like this cloud our judgment and give way to rude and obnoxious behavior that stains our existence everyday.

With an aborted sense of decorum many self-invested tyrants run amok in public letting doors slam in children’s faces, routinely poking people in the back with “selfie-sticks,” letting their dog crap on a neighbor’s lawn without cleaning it up and many other examples come to mind that are witnessed on a daily basis.

The fact that we have the “Super Bowl of shopping,” Black Friday, where shoppers are encouraged by stores to trample other customers into submission for a $100 flat screen television says a lot about what our culture has become and is hardly polite behavior.

This is an extreme case but it punctuates the massive issue that our society is headed down the toilet. Without common courtesy there will be a burning society of disparate values.

It seems society has come to a point where convenience overshadows what’s right and that has a lot to do with our absence of accountability. It seems people no longer feel guilty about what we have done or become. As if we are all sociopaths walking the streets looking for our next fix.

A common mistake would be to assume this is happening everywhere but this is not the case once students at Fullerton College get out of the dreaded parking structure.

As it turns out people are pretty nice when they walk onto campus, opening and holding doors, using their manners, helping each other routinely. Clarissa Leyva, 18, a psychology major, works the front lines at the Fullerton College bookstore, “the students treat me with respect,” Leyva said.

It is hard to shake off an incident in the parking structure where your life seemed in danger by a reckless driver but this student body is resilient. The students are aware of the parking issue but it doesn’t effect them once they are nestled in their classes.

When one takes a look around the quad one can see a populous at peace. Everybody seems to be getting along.

Walking into the cafeteria it is the same, seems Fullerton College, minus the parking concerns, has a community engaged in common courtesy.

Within the walls of the Admissions building works Mayra Perez, a 31 year old sociology major who deals with and array of different temperaments during the day. “people have good days and bad days, it’s my job to make sure they have resolution for any concerns,” Perez said, “the students get frustrated but they are polite.”

Webster’s Dictionary defines courtesy as “polite behavior that shows respect for other people.”

Perez defines common courtesy as “going above and beyond.”