Miss Manners^®

At the risk of being taken for an Edwardian sneering at Victorians, Miss Manners must say that society's prudery is not only ridiculous but dangerously repressive.

Everyone knows the facts of life. We all know that everybody does it, for heaven's sake. So why pretend otherwise?

And how is it possible to act as if a universal aspect of life doesn't exist, while all the while thinking of little else? People are all worried about themselves obsessively and dying of curiosity about everyone else.

Anyone who thinks that Miss Manners is talking about sex has a dirty mind, if she may be permitted so quaint an expression in an era when that activity is so commonly exposed that it has trouble making a living selling cars and beer.

Aging is the fact of life to which she is referring.

We are so much in denial about the plain fact that people keep growing older as to have sabotaged the manners by which age accrues respect, and to have invented conventions that our most straitlaced ancestors would denounce as ludicrous and hypocritical.

The dignity and privileges of age, including precedence, respect and tolerance for stories that have been told before, have vanished. Old people are themselves responsible for swatting down these benevolent attitudes, after which that last item fell of its own accord.

But, of course, they are not old people. There is no such thing. The only stages we now recognize are young, young-at-heart and dead.

This explains why it has become customary for people to assure one another that they mistake them for much younger than they are, all the while trying to find out how much older they are than they pretend to be.

Umbrage is taken if this fiction is exposed, even by a show of courtesy, such as yielding a seat or using the deferential terms "sir" and "ma'am." In the interests of sustaining the illusion that time stands still, our suspiciously worn-looking youth have killed whatever courtesies their juniors were required to show them.

Small wonder that another thing that fell of its own accord was the assumption that experience counts, and that the young have something to learn from those who have been around longer.

Giving up consideration and authority would be a better bargain if it worked. It is undeniable that age has a disadvantage compared to youth: a more limited future. But it doesn't work. No one is fooled -- neither the real young nor the natural life cycle. We have given up the fairest system we have for allotting privileges for nothing.

Furthermore, this charade offends those who are mature enough to accept and enjoy the different stages of life. The flattery involved is transparent and patronizing. Exclamations such as, "You look more like a high school kid than a teacher" and "I thought you were his older brother, not his father" may be meant as compliments, but they contain digs at professional competence and family dignity.

To be told that one is what one is obviously not -- as when a smart woman is told that she "thinks like a man" or an American that being cultured makes him seem more like a European -- denigrates what one actually is.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I dined at a very formal French restaurant where everything was superb except, perhaps, my use of the silverware.

Before the first course was presented (a dish with a sauce), the waiter placed an unfamiliar piece of silverware at the top of my table setting. It looked like a flattened tablespoon with a small, curved point at the end. This utensil was again presented with the main course that also included a sauce.

I have to tell you that I used it to "scoop/scrape" and devour (silently and discreetly) the superb sauces. Was I correct or merely the subject of ridicule for the waiters?

GENTLE READER: You were correct about the utensil, which is that useful-if-somewhat-questionable item, a sauce spoon.

Whether you are also correct in your suspicion that the waiters were ridiculing you, Miss Manners cannot say. Surely, sneering at the customers among themselves for real or fancied reasons is one of the perks of being a waiter in a very formal French restaurant.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I recently got divorced and remarried -- rather quickly, I might add. This came suddenly and unexpectedly -- to everyone around me, that is.

I, of course, saw it coming for quite a while. Preferring not to air my dirty laundry, I kept my marital affairs private.

When I see people I haven't seen in quite some time, I introduce my new husband as, "This is -----, my husband."

Right in front of him, I get questions like, "Oh, aren't you married to ----- anymore?" or "Where is -----, your first husband?" or "Did something terrible happen to -----?"

This, of course, puts my new husband in an awkward situation. Being the sweetheart that he is, he says nothing. It doesn't bother him, but I get very upset.

Now, if I were in the other person's shoes, yes, I would be surprised by this quick change, and a million questions would run through my head. But, out of respect for this other person, I would never ask about the situation.

Am I wrong to think this is unacceptable behavior? Am I getting myself out of joint unnecessarily? I don't understand how people can be so ignorant. Isn't it obvious that I am not married to ----- anymore? How do I answer these people?

Until now, I have been answering them with, "That's a closed chapter of my life; on to better things. ...." followed by a quick change of the subject. Sometimes I am confronted with people who simply cannot take a hint and want to dig into the dirty details, "Well, what on earth happened to you two?"

I finally had my fill of it today. Is the way I've been answering this question proper?

GENTLE READER: Is your doubt based on the notion that a proper answer would have the effect of zapping a busybody?

Would that it were so.

However, lest that give you evil ideas, Miss Manners assures you that rude answers merely encourage busybodies to rephrase the rude content of their questions in rude language.

What works is the slow but relentless method that busybodies employ -- repetition. What you are saying is fine; you just may not be saying it often enough. Every time someone restates the question, you should restate your answer.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Now in my 70s after a conservative upbringing, I receive calls from telemarketers who, although we have never met, begin by addressing me by my first name or even by the nickname Jim.

The callers sometimes become angry when I ask why they have chosen first-name intimacy in circumstances not warranting it. Once, when I hung up after posing that question and failed to receive a reply, the telemarketer called again and left an obscene message on the answering machine.

Solicitations bearing the salutation "Dear James" I simply return to the sender or discard. However, I would appreciate being informed of the correct way to respond to like-minded callers with whom, by my having answered the telephone, I have entered into a speaking relationship.

GENTLE READER: There is a quick and civil divorce obtainable from these relationships. All you need to do is to say, "Thank you, I'm not interested," and hang up.

Miss Manners holds no brief for unsolicited telephone calls and unsolicited intimacy, but she is afraid that unsolicited etiquette lessons are not justifiable, either.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Are there professional situations in which one can be too polite? In recent years, TV and radio journalists have tended to preface their interviews with greetings and concluded them with thanks.

I don't remember Walter Cronkite doing that. Many of the interviewees seem not to know if or how they should respond, resulting in awkward pauses and interruptions. This effort at bonhomie, doubtless designed to re-image the media as kind and caring, seems out of place and distracting in the context.

As a corollary, I have noticed that those who do respond to the interviewer's thank-you often do so with their own thank-you. This seems to be a trend in society at large. In our effort to be the most deferential, have we abandoned the old-fashioned and, what I was taught to be, the proper response: "You're welcome"?

GENTLE READER: As far back as Miss Manners can remember, which must have been when TV sets had to be hand-cranked, an oddly misplaced form of social manners was being used.

Newscasters and interviewers always called themselves "hosts" and referred to the people they interviewed as "guests." At the same time, the industry was forever talking about itself in terms of "being invited" into the viewers' living rooms (this was before there was a set at every bedside; Miss Manners warned you that it was a long time ago), which would make those hosts the guests of the audience.

So it is not that they are "too polite" (a concept Miss Manners refuses to recognize); they are just confused. Guests are supposed to thank, and, as they are all guests in one way or another, they are all too busy thanking to accept thanks.

Peculiar as this pattern is, it has been used for so long that more businesslike manners on television would now seem too curt. Miss Manners only regrets, as you do, that the confusion has spread to society at large, where it is being forgotten that the courteous answer to the courtesy of thanks is "You're welcome."

In connection with TV programs, saying "you're welcome" would be the job of host-viewers, if they were not all too busy saying, "There must be something else on."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My mother says putting lipstick on at the table in a restaurant is poor manners. I say that if you have a beautiful holder or compact and don't take all evening, it is accepted today. Who is right -- her (old school) or me (new school)?

GENTLE READER: The new school is right. But wait -- before you rush off to triumph over your mother, Miss Manners must point out that it is your mother who represents the new school in this dispute.

Before World War I, ladies did not put on make-up in public for the sensible reason that they were pretending that they never wore any. After the war, some of them inaugurated the modern era of fashion by wearing little else.

Thus the beautiful compacts, which it soon came to be permissible to flash at the table, date from the 1920s and 1930s. These often matched elaborate cigarette holders, as smoking at the table was also permitted.

In recent times, onlookers revolted against both smoking and grooming at the table on the grounds that they found those practices unappetizing. They have therefore been banned by the new school.

: