Do Avoid Getting Blown Away

Dear Miss Manners: How can one handle the situation of two cars stopped in the middle of the street, while the occupants of both carry on a conversation? Or of one car stopped in the traffic lane while a pedestrian walks to the center of the street to talk to the driver?

Wait, hoping they notice you and move?

Wait, glare and fume?

Honk and hope you get nothing more than a glare?

Honk to warn them, then try to find a way around the blockage, hoping that the pedestrian doesn’t back into your path or that one of the cars doesn’t start forward just as you succeed in inching past them?

Swerve past them?

If one is a neighbor, wait and make a polite request at some later time?

Gentle Reader: It is of intense regret to Miss Manners that the use of the horn, once charmingly known as the voice of the motor car, has been so abused as to make any use of that instrument seem rude.

She unfortunately knows what you mean by hoping for nothing more than a glare. You are hoping that the peep of a horn does not result in your neighbor’s stepping out of the car and shooting you dead on the claim - attributed, of course, to a high sense of etiquette - that you have demonstrated disrespect.

Yet you must indicate that your way has been blocked by the choice of the middle of the road for socializing, and you must do it without endangering yourself or anyone else.

Presuming that the incident is more than a quick plea for directions or exchange of greetings, put your head out your window and shout a pleasant, “Excuse me!” When they look up, announce without apparent rancor, “I need to get by.”

If you are too far away for that and it is daylight (at night, blinking lights is a lower key way of getting attention than the horn) try a quick tap on the horn to produce nothing more than a peep.

On getting their attention, an apologetic smile and a shrug is the polite way to say, “You probably don’t realize that you are blocking traffic.”

Dear Miss Manners: My travel agent has just informed me that my wife’s sister and her husband, who we’d asked to join us on a cruise to Alaska, have invited three other couples to go along. We do not know any of these people.

Although we plan to make the most of it, I feel that they are way out of line inviting friends without, at least, discussing it with us.

Gentle Reader: Way out of line would be inviting someone to your house without checking with you first. Inviting someone to buy tickets for a cruise one is taking, without checking first with one’s other travel companions, is slightly out of line.

This was a cooperative venture, so although you proposed it, you are not in the position of hosts. Still, Miss Manners understands that it is annoying to find your plans altered without consultation.

She is grateful for your decision to make the best of it, and wishes you a pleasant voyage. Presumably, your relatives think these are people whom you would enjoy knowing.

xxxx

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