A man does it standing up, a woman sitting down, and a dog on three legs

It was only after the event, when I analyzed within, that I was reminded of how much some practices that I systematically learnt have now simply become a part of who I am and my instinctive and reflexive behavior.

At the friend's place, another (female) friend was leaving and I automatically walked ahead and held the gate open.  A simple act, but one that provides me with enough and more to ponder about the world.

As I continued along this self-analysis (note to myself: stop analyzing!) I was reminded of my recent visit to India.  After a lunch meeting with high school friends, as we were exiting the building, I waited for the (female) friends to exit before I followed suit.  "Oh, a gentleman" one remarked with a smile.

Of course, like you and everybody else, I was not born with instructions such as holding the door open coded into my brain.  I learnt this behavior.  But not in the old country.  There, all I had observed during my growing up years was that women "followed" the men.  It was a less than equal treatment of women, which always made me highly uncomfortable and angry on many occasions.

Exiting the old country was not to lead a life of an Indian in a new setting.  Nor was it to ditch the old country and adopt a new persona.  It has, instead, been a glorious experiment to try to combine the best of the two worlds, and to avoid the worst in both. (Though, of course, some result in humorously awkward situations too, like this one.)  How I relate to women is, thus, a product of this cultural fusion.  The old country's traditions certainly did not teach me to hold the door for women.   

A couple of days ago, I was at a gathering with the friend.  We were sitting around the dining table.  A much older couple were leaving and as the woman neared me, I stood up to say bye to her.  "You don't have to stand" she said with a smile.

In the old country, I didn't know about the standing up either.  After all, back then women did not even sit and eat together with the males.  This is one of those that I picked up with living here and from the travels.

But, America is a strange place, too, with uber-casual interactions.  

My mother is big on politeness. Recently, before a long trip with my girlfriend’s family, she wrote me a letter outlining the things I should remember to do: stand up straight, hold open doors, and rise when ladies approach the table. “I could go on and on,” she wrote, wrapping things up. “Just please reread the etiquette book I got for you in highschool.”
I did not reread the etiquette book. I trust my own sense of decorum, particularly while on vacation; I’m good at vacations. I’m also a thirty-one year old financially independent human who has lived several time zones away from my mother for over a decade. But a short time after returning from that trip, my girlfriend and I moved from the city where we’d met and spent our entire professional, semi-adult lives, to a different one, across the county, and I wished I had reread it. I’ve come to realize that the thing about moving to a new city and meeting lots of strangers who might, eventually, become my friends—or people I have only interacted with on the internet but are kind of friends there—is that no one knows how to greet anyone anymore.
This is a uniquely American problem.

It certainly is uniquely American.

BTW, in all my life in the old country, I certainly did not know about what I am alluding to in the title of this post.  The title is nothing but a funny way in which I was once taught about etiquette.  The humor in that comes from when you ask somebody, "what does a man do standing up, a woman when sitting down, while a dog does when on three of its legs?"  Almost immediately we might smile thinking about peeing.  But, of course, that is only a trap--it is about shaking hands: a man stands up to shake hands but a woman does not have to.  And, of course, a dog extends its paw with its other legs on the ground.

Another day in my autoethnographic rumination! ;)