Rally Round Rally

Rally 'Round Raleigh

It's somewhere in those few lazy, yet hectic days between Christmas and New Year's, and shopping malls all around the country are displaying a truly fascinating phenomenon. For it is now that the malls are hopelessly clogged not with shoppers, but with returnees. You know what I mean - everyone has found fault with their Christmas gifts, and they are now trying to one-up jolly old Saint Nick. You are among this never-settle-for-second-best crowd, laden with two heavy bags of gifts which, despite the fact that you are a medium-sized man, are all in either extra-large or extra-small. You are approaching the entrance to the mall and are barely able to wedge the door open with your foot, when you see an elderly lady approaching the entrance as well. You courteously (yet clumsily) hold the door as she passes. "Oh, thank you, sir," she says in a heart-warming, Angela-Lansbury-like voice, "the world needs more gentlemen like you." "Oh, it's nothing," you reply, your cheeks turning roughly the shade of a poinsettia. But what a fantastic feeling, you think to yourself, to have done a favor like that just out of the kindness of you heart. Why, you feel almost like Sir Walter Ra-SMACK!!! Your thoughts and good feelings are rudely interrupted by the next woman to pass through the door, and the poinsettia shade is now much brighter and in the shape of a handprint. When you look up, the young woman is squared off in front of you, her accusing finger pointing squarely at your stinging visage. "Chauvinist pig!" she proclaims. Now you might just be hallucinating because of the slap, but you're pretty sure you can see steam coming out of her ears. "It's men like you that make the world the cesspool of sexism that it is today!" As she storms away, you stand there dumbfounded - or perhaps, dumbstruck is more fitting - and let the door swing shut. You obviously have a little to learn about your modern manners before you can face what's on the other side of that door.

Well, that's what I'm here for today - to help you find the chivalry of the new millennium. You know, it seems that one must be a little more prepared to face everyday life these days; you may find yourself unprotected from the accusations of the world if you so much as venture out your front door in anything less than a full-body suit of PC armor. It's