Miss Manners^®

It is time for sweet remembrance of auld acquaintance.

(We use the quaint spelling at this time of year to remind ourselves of all those high school classmates who were mangling their perfectly respectable names in the pathetic hope of making them look exotic. How much fun it is to embarrass them by using those odd spellings, now that they think nobody remembers.)

Or rather, reminiscing would be sweet if it were the sweet acquaintanceships that people remembered. Miss Manners has noticed that it tends not to work that way.

Whom do you spend more time thinking about: The person in your prom picture whose idiotic get-up you unaccountably admired at the time, but whose calls you started avoiding your freshman year in college? Or the one who laughed derisively-- and publicly -- when you proffered your heart?

Who plays a bigger part in your fantasies of settling old scores: The loyal friend who saw you through troubled times but had outgrown you by the time you might have reciprocated? Or the bully who caused you all that trouble?

Who is the person you dream of dazzling by achieving untoward success: The kindly senior employee who took the trouble to guide you? Or the rival who tried to thwart you?

Miss Manners sincerely hopes that you reserve a warm feeling for those figures from the past who were good to you. No one regrets more than she does the miserable fact that rudeness makes a more lasting impression than kindness.

But such being the case, she might as well derive from it a stern lesson in manners.

The lesson is that although the world changes, humiliating memories remain fixed. Everyone accepts the second half of this proposition, although some let old defeats continue to rankle while others remove the sting by turning them into amusing stories.

It is the first part of this lesson that people seem to have difficulty grasping.

You know that you have changed as you matured, and are likely to fancy that you changed for the better. You grew out of your shyness and into your nose-size, achieved a reasonable life if not the success you hoped, and have proved socially and romantically desirable, at least to some. But you have a hard time recognizing that others are not right where you left them.

That homely, unpopular kid you found so easy to scorn may now be a beauty or a celebrity. The friend you no longer needed may have become influential. The rival you tricked may have been promoted above you -- or could even be writing a book about the business.

And you may be sure that the one thing about them all that has not changed is the memory of how badly you treated them when you thought you could get away with it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I will be attending a black tie dinner, which I am fairly sure actually means "black tie" when it says so. I have a pair of long, white kid-leather gloves -- about four inches above the elbow -- and I was wondering if they would be too formal.

Also, I can't manage buttoning and unbuttoning them myself, and I know you are supposed to remove them when you eat. Would asking whoever is sitting next to me to unbutton one be, well, too flirty?

GENTLE READER: Flirty is hardly the word. The prospect of your dinner partner's undoing your gloves, button by button, would be so erotic as to mesmerize not just him but the entire table. Why do you think strippers are so fastidious about wearing long gloves?

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Miss Manners can rescue you from temptation. Over-the-elbow gloves are for white tie occasions. For black tie ones, your gloves should go only to the elbow (or within an inch of the end of a longer sleeve). Those you can peel off yourself, provocatively or not.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: In December of last year I was in New York City, and went with some friends to see the World Trade Center site. It was a moving experience, and afterward we recouped our spirits at the nearest coffee shop. Waiting in line ahead of us was a New York City firefighter in full gear, obviously on a short break from his work at the site.

I was seized with the impulse to buy the man a latte. However, I could think of no way to do this gracefully. He was ahead of me in line, and so I could not dart ahead and slap money down on the counter.

As a woman, I know precisely what to do if a strange man should offer to buy me a beverage at a bar (if asked, decline with thanks; if the drink just appears at my table, convey fulsome thanks via the waiter but leave promptly). But there seemed to be no way to reverse-engineer this knowledge. In the end, I timidly did nothing.

What should I have done? None of the alternatives -- buy a fistful of gift certificates and thrust them at uniformed persons, write a check to one of the WTC charities -- seems quite satisfactory.

GENTLE READER: This is a fascinating example of how the changing circumstances of social context affect etiquette.

Your interpretation of offering to buy a stranger's drink as being an overture to, ah, courtship, was valid before the attack. In the months following, however, the motive of wanting simply to thank Ground Zero workers was universally recognized. You could simply have marched to the counter and said, "I'd like to buy the brave firefighter a latte," put down your money, and returned to your place in line. Miss Manners promises you that the firefighter would not have protested, "But I'm a married man!"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have decided to cut someone out of my social circle. It's nothing that that person has done, and I like her very much, but I've come to feel that there are some very fundamental differences between us, and to continue association with her will only hurt us more in the long run. I drifted away from her a few months ago, saying I needed some time and space, and have found that life without her has been much more restful.

Does etiquette mandate that I tell her what I'm doing? I don't want to hurt her feelings, but have no interest in resuming our former friendship. Should I just remain quiet and distant or do I owe her some explanation (which could get me sucked back into everything I was escaping from)?

GENTLE READER: Etiquette mandates that you do not tell her what you are doing, much less why. It knows no way of saying "Life is more pleasant without you" that spares the feelings of the person in question. Miss Manners is afraid that you will have to do this the traditional way, by claiming to be too busy to see her.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am not Catholic, but my fiance is. When I go to church with him, the members of the congregation hold hands during the Lord's Prayer.

I'm not Christian and do not recite this prayer, but I hold my fiance's hand anyway. If we sit in the middle of a pew, the person on my other side invariably reaches for my other hand. Should I hold his or her hand, too?

Not to do so seems rude, but to do so makes me feel like a more active participant than I like to be. In general, I take the hand if offered and hold it passively; that is, not making any effort to raise our joined hands when the rest of the congregation does.

GENTLE READER: You are confusing handholding with holding hands. How could that be?

Taking a wild leap, Miss Manners presumes that you hold hands with your fiance because it feels good. But this gesture has a bit of symbolic content as well. It signals to him, and to any onlookers in other circumstances, that you are a pair. (Unless, of course, you are in the midst of a public scandal, in which case it gives others the signal that you are holding on for dear life.)

Miss Manners would interpret the handholding ritual you describe at church as symbolizing the good will and fellowship of the congregants rather than an endorsement of the specific prayer, but she won't argue that with you. She only warns you that a refusal to participate will look dangerously close to refusing to shake a proffered hand socially, which is a major insult. That is why it seems rude to you.

If you feel you must refuse to participate, put both your hands behind your back and give your unknown neighbor a regretful little shake of the head, accompanied by a friendly look, to indicate that it is nothing personal.

But for heaven's sake, as it were, don't use the occasion to have a little hand-squeeze with your fiance. That only looks as if you have good will toward the person on your right, but not the one on your left. At least the dead handshake solution you propose (is that some sort of doesn't-count-because-I-had-my-fingers-crossed idea?) only reflects badly on you, not on innocent churchgoers.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was taught to put my silverware across the top of my plate -- knife, fork, spoon -- at the end of a meal. I've taught my son to do the same. However, lately I've been out with a number of sophisticated friends, who dine out more than I do, who put their knife and fork upside down in a large "V" at the bottom of their plates at the end of a restaurant meal. Have I become a rube? Worse, am I teaching my son something incorrect?

GENTLE READER: No, but you are hanging out with gluttons. The placement they use is the signal to a waiter that they are not finished eating. As their plates are apparently empty when they do this, Miss Manners can only imagine that they are hoping more food will appear.

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