I Suggest That You Respond In Kind

Dear Miss Manners: While I am fit and what we used to call “well preserved,” I look my age - 50. What do you feel is the motive behind - and the appropriate response to - a stranger’s greeting me as “young lady,” as in the grocer’s handing me the bag saying, “Here you go, young lady”?

Can these people - all men, so far - think that this is flattering? I find it not only disingenuous but downright patronizing and somehow demeaning. Am I being overly sensitive?

Do I say anything? Suffer in silence? Consider it a polite alternative to “Hey, you”?

It is curious that these men are very near my own age. Curious, too that this remark has had the singular and immediate effect of making me feel older!

Gentle Reader: Yes, they think this is flattering, and no, Miss Manners does not think you are overly sensitive in finding it demeaning.

Flattery has to be plausible in order to work. It also has to be flattering.

Pretending to mistake a lady’s age by an entire generation does not meet the plausibility test. It insultingly assumes that the lady is so eager to deny her maturity that she will grasp gratefully at any preposterous remark.

And of course what underlies it is the presumption that it is an embarrassment for a lady to age. Sadly, there are ladies who think so too. That is partly why many gentlemen - who wouldn’t dream of applying this to themselves - believe that it is an etiquette mistake to treat grown-up ladies with the dignity that is their due.

To help enlighten these gentlemen gently, she suggests replying to their unfortunate but well-meant usage by saying, “Why, thank you, sonny.”

Dear Miss Manners: I enjoy entertaining my side of the family as well as my husband’s and we always seem to have a good time. We have a traditional get-together at our house the week before Christmas, then everyone spends the holidays with the other side of their families.

I feel we do more than our share for my husband’s side. He is the youngest of three boys (both parents are deceased), only one of whom is married. If we do not invite them for a holiday dinner, they go to my sister-in-law’s parents. It’s been at least six years since we’ve been invited to my sister- and brother-in-laws’ for a holiday dinner.

My husband and I agree that my sister-in-law does not like to cook, so it is easier for her to go to her parents’. I have a good relationship with her and would like to discuss the situation, but I don’t know how to go about it. It would be nice for the kids to get together more often.

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners is all for fairness and doesn’t want you to be overburdened. But she hates to see you work up resentment based on two unfortunate assumptions about family life that she hoped had been discarded.

One is that household tasks should be divided strictly by gender, so that every wife is responsible for cooking. The second, which succeeded it, is that everybody had to do the same task the same number of times, so that for every meal you cook, you are owed a meal.

Family life should be ruled by a more flexible code, whereby the work is still fairly shared, but according to the preferences and abilities of those concerned.

You say that you enjoy entertaining, and your sister-in-law doesn’t. You have a good relationship with her, so she probably is not shifting other responsibilities onto you while she does nothing.

So instead of resenting her for not doing something she dislikes, couldn’t you suggest her doing something more that she does? You could continue to do the entertaining, for example - or one or both of the husbands could be responsible for it - and ask her to take your children on outings with their cousins when you need free time.

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