Roxy Hart and Velma Kelly bemoan the loss of civility in their song “Class” from the award-winning Kander & Ebb musical, Chicago. They sing of how “kids these days” use disrespectful language and treat others rudely and impersonally, all the while using crass language themselves to sing the story. The musical irony of ruing the loss of civility in an uncivil tone has tickled audiences for years. What is this civility of which they sing?

My first non-babysitting job was running a snack bar at a small swim and tennis club. An opening weekend task was to write the menu on the chalkboard, and in my best block printing I wrote “ice tea.” The club manager swooped down, erased the entry, handed the chalk back to me and said, “It’s iced tea, not ice tea. You don’t make tea out of ice; you put it on ice.” I made the correction and chalked it up to a learning experience. (See what I did there? Chalk? Chalked it up? Okay…)