You’ll Have To Sort Of Set Them Up

Dear Miss Manners: I would like to acquire a pair of old-fashioned wooden skis. Although I have read that these are available at antique shows for around $100, I have searched locally, and there are none to be found.

However, friends of my parents, who are in the latter half of their 60s, own two pairs which they still use. They are childless.

Whenever they travel, they ask me to watch their home and take care of their cat. I have never demanded compensation (my parents brought me up to help neighbors), but they pay me between $10 and $15 a day, based on the rate charged by kennels. When they went to the coast last spring, I was paid $140 for cat-sitting.

I have the notion that they could give me a pair of skis instead of money. Since they are obviously enjoying the use of theirs and probably will for the next two or three decades, how do I, then, request rights to get one pair of skis when they no longer use, want or need a pair?

Gentle Reader: Are you asking Miss Manners for a polite way to say, “When you become incapacitated or die, may I have your skis?”

Perhaps you figure that she will suggest some slight addition that would make it all right, such as “But please don’t rush on my account.”

She is afraid that you cannot stake claims on other people’s possessions. You can only admire them.

However, your admiration might take the following form:

“Oh, you have wooden skis. I love them. I’m dying to have a pair, but I can’t find them anywhere. If you see any for sale anywhere, would you be kind enough to let me know?”

After that, you discreetly retire. This allows time for it to occur to one of them to say to the other, “You know, that boy offered to cat-sit for free. Do you suppose we could give him the skis, instead of paying him? That way, he’d be happy, and we’d save enough to buy ourselves some decent new skis.”

Dear Miss Manners: I have had many visitors in my home, some of them my children’s friends. I have great judgment problems defining who pays what.

I pick them up at the airport - who pays for the parking fee? At any restaurant, who pays for the meal? Or do we all pay our own?

Upon visiting places, should we pay our own way or expect our guests to buy our tickets? Who pays for the gas when I drive them all around? The parking fees?

At home, all is paid for by the hosts, the wife and me. Should we accept any money donated at the end of their stay?

Gentle Reader: When you or your children issue invitations to visit, do you mention that you are running a bed and breakfast?

This is not something you can spring after their arrival on people who thought that they had been offered hospitality in a private home. And hospitality includes picking up the cost of entertaining your guests, however you choose to entertain them. You need not pick them up or take them to restaurants, but if you do, you cannot charge them.

That said, Miss Manners admits that a good guest should reciprocate, and a way to start doing that on the spot is to invite the hosts out, assuming the costs. Reciprocation also requires writing and sending a present of thanks afterwards and inviting the hosts back (although the latter would involve your children’s friends inviting them, rather than you).

Offering cash at the end of the stay is an insult - suggesting that the privilege of visiting you is for sale - however much you might appreciate such an insult.

MEMO: Judith Martin is the author of “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization” (Crown).

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate