Mesa Musings:

I’d just opened my latest Barnes & Noble acquisition and begun to read.

I was at my favorite reading spot in Newport-Mesa; seated in my car in the parking lot of the Newport Theater Arts Center, on Cliff Drive, overlooking Pacific Coast Highway, Lido Isle, Balboa Peninsula and, in the distance, Catalina.

I love sitting in the parking lot, book in hand, with the breathtaking view before me. Many of my fellow Costa Mesans and Newporters join me at the vista spot during the lunch hour to eat sandwiches, burritos and the contents of chicken buckets.

One recent afternoon my reverie was interrupted when a souped-up truck pulled into the lot and three teenage girls — I would estimate 16 or 17 years of age — got out and went over to the lookout area and plopped on the grass.

One, I could clearly discern, was sobbing. As she lay on the grass with her head in her hands, the other two girls sat by morosely. Nothing was said for a while, so I kept reading.

Ten minutes later a shrill and animated conversation erupted, as the ladies let fly one screeching epithet after another. I deduced that the crying girl had just broken up with her boyfriend. Rather, he’d been the instigator.

The poor girl was beside herself.

But, what I found most disturbing about the episode was the tenor of the conversation. These young ladies were using language that, well, in my day wasn’t the accepted vernacular of young ladies.

Now, I’m no priggish bore. When I was slightly older than they, I cited liberally from the same lexicon while serving Uncle Sam as a GI in Korea.

We GIs employed salty phrases with great rapidity, but never in the presence of “ladies.” Women, we seemed to recognize instinctively (more likely, our dear mothers had inculcated us with the belief), were more refined than we, in addition to being smarter and just plain better.

I’m not being patronizing. Ladies, we reasoned, were deserving of respect, and we held them in highest regard. Our vulgar lingua franca was reserved for the locker room, bivouac field and barracks, but certainly not the public arena in the presence of the “Fairer Sex.”

Had I somehow let slip a coarse comment in front of a lady, I’d have been mortally embarrassed and would have apologized profusely.

Dogfaces in 1965 respected women for the simple reason that they demanded and deserved it. We barbarian hordes knew that women brought to our corner of creation a civilizing influence. They stood watch atop the ramparts of decency and civility, keeping anarchy and immorality at bay.

Call me old school, but I’ve never seen women as being the equals of men. They are our superiors. But ladies, in recent decades you’ve ceded your lodgment on Barbary’s Coast, and that hurts us all. To whom much has been given, much is required, and you have work to do.

By the tone of the language of the three young girls the other day — and what I hear daily at malls and on campuses — 21st century ladies don’t respect themselves, or others of their gender. It’s a sad situation. How do they expect to command the respect of immature Visigoths when they exhibit such conflicted behavior?

We brutes need more from you! Conversely, you’ve got to pull more out of us — and you can. Trust me, long recitations of profanities are not needed to capture our attention. You already have it. Don’t try to become us! We need you to be you.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that we males are slightly dim-witted. We’ll pretty much do as you demand. Demand little of us, and that’s what you’ll get.

I’m no self-loathing male basher.

My observation is drawn from my advanced years, and from being the father of three grown daughters, and grandfather of five girls and a boy.

The time is now for us to hear you ladies roar in numbers too big to ignore. The futures of our sons and grandsons are at stake.

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.