Civil discourse. Those aren’t bad words or something that can’t be achieved.

Being civil is easy. Speak as one would like to be spoken to.

There’s always someone who feels superior and feels entitled to be uncivil to persons he or she perceives to be lesser.

That superiority delusion is seen in news reports, where people accost shop workers and tell them to go back where they were born, walk up to people sitting peacefully on park benches and tell them they have no right to be sitting there, arm themselves and kill a few innocents and generally tell ethnic people of color why they aren’t welcome.

The nation’s people are being lectured daily on civility, good manners and patriotism by folks who aren’t showing it. Try to get a reasonable answer to the simple questions that result when the lecture is over.

My friend said if he were told to go back to where he was born, he would have to go to Club Ives. That was the hospital for years before the Lutheran Hospital Association began building a new and improved one.

I was lucky. I was born in the “new” hospital. I go back there quite often for medical tests and people are polite.

A fun exercise – ice breaker – would be to ask people in a room or at a table exactly where each one would go.

Going back to his place of birth might be difficult for my oldest son, who was born in Santa Fe, N.M., in a facility which no longer exists.

The other two were born in the very same delivery room that I was. I think it’s still there, since that wing of the hospital hasn’t been demolished, but wide, heavy doors bar my entrance.

I could ask to see it, but what for? Babies are born in comfortable birthing rooms now and I appreciate that.

“Most people aren’t from here, though,” I was told by someone who was studying population trends.

The nature of growth and the “brain drain” lend credence to that. Young people seldom find good jobs right out of college or high school, so they head for “Califas,” Denver, “the Springs” or Albuquerque. Many return with their emotional tails between their legs. No matter how wonderful relatives and friends tell them it is, it may not be.

Many native-born San Luis Valley residents remain and are joined by newcomers, along with persons who have returned “home” after moving away to seek success, finding it and seeking a peaceful retirement.

Some bring with them stories of the crude, rude and unreasonable persons elsewhere, then become irate when the wait staff can’t prove a small cup of oil is “extra virgin.”

Questioning revealed an oddball diet plan that somehow created a reason to verbally abuse a waitress who trusted the chef to tell the truth. Two tablespoons of odd oil would not mean instant death.

The truth lies in developing a habit of being civil and polite. In other words, be nice.