DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a very private person, and I believe that having good manners is important, so I work hard at being polite every day. I have had a co-worker for the last two years who keeps asking me what I'm "really like."

When this happens, I answer, "This is what I'm really like," until he gets tired of it and gives up. I have encountered other people who ask me variations of this same question, e.g. "What is the real you like?"

My co-worker has started saying with great pleasure if he ever hears me say something even vaguely negative or not entirely polite, "Now, there's the real you coming out."

I am getting frustrated with people who assume that my slip-ups and mistakes expose more of my real character than the manners I work hard at every day. I am getting tired of people who take my reserved demeanor as a kind of challenge.

Is there a way to politely get these kinds of people to leave me alone and stop prodding me like I am some kind of circus animal? I feel like they're hoping I'll crack one day and throw a fit, but I don't understand why.

GENTLE READER: Whole schools of unpleasant art have been built on the idea that only the ugly is real.

The same notion applied to people appeals to those who, like your co-worker, want to justify their own rudeness on the grounds that they are being natural, honest and true to themselves. As they undoubtedly are, more's the pity for the rest of us.

Manners, your colleague doubtless points out, are artificial. So are other forms of learned behavior, such as literacy, toilet training and, indeed, civilization itself.

You are quite right that such people are hoping that you will crack. It would be kinder to commiserate with them for having such a dismal view of humanity.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm a senior in high school who plays on our girls' basketball team. I've known most of my teammates for years, and, for the most part, we get along well.

However, there is one "quirk," if you will, that drives me crazy. Many of our girls sometimes make a huge and annoying fuss about the smell in our lavatory after someone uses it. The best way to describe it is how young boys react when one of them releases odor. The girls, some of them fellow seniors, will hoot, holler, fuss and laugh.

Maybe I'm making too big a deal and they're just joking, but I find this behavior both juvenile and insulting, as I expect it from my younger brother and his friends. Is there a tactful way to remind my teammates that although we're athletes, we're also young ladies, and that this is not the way to conduct ourselves in public?

GENTLE READER: Well, they are juveniles. And they may grow out of it -- if they don't decide that freedom consists of aspiring to men's locker-room behavior.

Be grateful that you are beyond this yourself, and not their mother. As Miss Manners is sure you know from observing your younger brother and his crowd, usurping that position would only drive them to grosser behavior.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our neighborhood has a listserve where people discuss and post issues from yard sales to neighborhood functions. The following was posted:

"Hi Neighbors,??Does anyone know whether there are any regulations in place regarding ?the use of emergency sirens during the night/early morning hours?

"While I recognize the need for sirens when emergency vehicles are ?traveling, with the purpose of alerting other vehicles and/or ?pedestrians, the sirens can also be extremely loud especially when ?used constantly rather than intermittently. Both this morning and ?yesterday morning, my children (and my husband and I) were awoken between 6:30 and 6:45 am by very loud sirens. Before moving here, we never had this ?problem."

Wondering if you could publish just what exactly is wrong with this scenario. It is rather humorous, albeit disturbing!

GENTLE READER: Indeed. One wouldn't think that respectable people needed to be reminded to have their heart attacks and house fires at a decent hour.

Miss Manners certainly hopes that is the case with this neighbor. As the lady is new in the neighborhood, she has the opportunity to serve as an example of those who are generous enough to value others' slumber over their own life, limb and property.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband has always let our son, who is now 3, play with various items on the table when we go out to eat. These items include sugar packets, creamers, jelly packets and things of that nature. I think it's gross that they are playing with things that other people will actually use for their food and drink, but my husband thinks it's no big deal because these items are wrapped.

I chose to let it go several times in the past in an attempt to not be controlling and let him do his thing. However, when my son and I went out to lunch with his aunt and her children, my son went to grab for these items, to which his aunt immediately said "no, no" because she was closest to him.

I want to make this a consistent rule that he not be allowed to play with these items to avoid confusion in the future. Although my husband is willing to back me up on this rule, we still are curious as to the manners aspect of it.

GENTLE READER: The reason is that it revolts other people.

In better days, when children were routinely taught table manners (and conversation) every night at the family dinner table, the most frequently heard admonition was "Don't play with your food."

Intermixed with "Tell us about your science project" and "Pay attention to what your father is saying; you might learn something" were specific instructions, such as "Stop making a volcano out of your mashed potatoes and gravy," "Stop blowing bubbles in your milk" and "Stop throwing peas at your sister."

And so on, about everything on the table, including the candles, the napkins and certainly including all foods.

If anyone questions this, Miss Manners can supply a cautionary tale about an American ambassador in Europe who lost his job for not obeying. At a state dinner, he bet his dinner partner that he could shoot a pea across the table into the decolletage of the lady seated opposite him. Won the bet but lost the job.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have "one of those faces" people often find familiar, somehow. Friends have often "spotted me" in places I've never been. When I lived in L.A., strangers would say they saw me on TV shows.

Other than the boyfriend who insisted he saw me out with another man, my apparently numerous dopplegangers have caused few problems. But recently, while attending my daughter's softball game, I was approached by a woman who sat down beside me and my 3-year-old and asked, "Do you have another daughter. I said, yes, one that was playing on the team.

"No, another one," she said. No. "How about a son?" No. "Well, where do you work?"

At this point, I said I was feeling uncomfortable. I said. She looked at me as if she didn't believe me. "Anywhere else?" No.

"You look very familiar." She didn't look familiar to me, at all, but I thought saying so would be rude, so I just continued to watch the game.

"Where would I know you from?"

I was not about to give her a list of my personal affiliations. Not only was it none of her business, but I don't like discussing religion or politics with acquaintances, let alone complete strangers.

"I'm sorry, I don't know," I said. At this point, my daughter was going up to bat, so I was watching and cheering for her.

The woman pressed on. "Well, where do you live?" I told her my city. And she continued her questioning with, "Whereabouts in (the city)?"

I gave her a vague reference to our side of the city ("off of such-and-such highway" which could have been anywhere on the northeast side), and inadvertently drowned out her next question with our family's cheering for my daughter, who'd just had a hit.

I then started to say to her, "I'm sorry I can't be of more help," but she got up and left, as if she were angry.

I didn't think I was under any obligation to provide personal information to someone who was utterly unknown to me, and who was interrupting our family's enjoyment of the game.

Was there some better way I should have dealt with the situation? And, just out of curiosity, is there any kind of etiquette involved in approaching someone who looks familiar? In my past experiences, people at least offered some suggestions, such as "Do you attend this church?" or "Do your children go to that school?" But she offered me nothing. It was very strange.

GENTLE READER: You didn't think of offering her the explanation about often being mistaken for others?

Miss Manners agrees that your inquisitor was rude in her relentlessness. Two guesses, such as you suggest, ought to be the limit in such an inquiry, and then one should be obliged to give up. You are hardly responsible for the continuation of rudeness in that show of dissatisfaction.

But surely you could have spared yourself the ordeal by a pleasant admission that this happens often, and the firm statement, "And I don't believe we have met before."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I work in a call center/sales position. When speaking to potential clients or offering customer-service on existing sales, is it improper to address them as Sir or Ma'am?

GENTLE READER: No, but many of them are so eager to be mistaken for youngsters that they don't realize that.

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