I think our society has come to such a level of wanting to be nice and tolerant, they have lost sight of being practical and straight forward in their approach and social interaction with their fellow human beings. Things might improve if people had a mandatory class in good manners in their formative years.
Thanksgiving always reminds me of this. One year, we invited a friend to share Thanksgiving dinner with us. We asked a month ahead of time so he had time to figure out his schedule. We waited and waited for his response. Finally, a day or two before Thanksgiving, we asked this person directly if he was accepting our invitation or not. He said, "Oh, I decided to accept another invitation last week." I often wondered if he was afraid of hurting our feelings and thought that just not responding would be a better course of action.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be an isolated incident and I have heard from other people who has experienced this. Two years in a row, we felt sorry for a student unable to get home for the holiday and offered an invitation. Should have learned our lesson the first time. The first year, she didn't bother to turn us down until almost the day before and we found out later, she 'got a better invitation'. This year, she never got back to us and we discovered she had accepted an invitation a week prior to ours. She KNEW at the time we extended our invitation that she already had other plans! Makes you wonder if we were a 'just in case' invitation, she didn't want to say no, or she just has horrible manners.
My children have always moaned and groaned when I insisted they send thank you notes or immediate replies to invitations. I'm hoping the early training makes them appreciative and well-mannered as they go on in life.
My favorite non-response concerned a niece. She had turned eleven or twelve and we decided to send her a 'grown up' Christmas gift - her own hair dryer. About five years later, it came up in the conversation with her mother who said that her daughter had been SO thrilled with the gift and wore it out using it. She absolutely loved it!
Not to worry, however. We are getting better at selecting out holiday guests these days. Two years in a row, we invited a family with six delightful young adults who promptly accepted our invitation and showed up for Thanksgiving! We felt very blessed with the company! And those other people? Well, they don't know what they missed and we can only pray they get more blessings out of life than they are currently extending!
