Fulfill ‘Honor’ As Best You Can

Dear Miss Manners: A few weeks ago, I saw someone who had been a pretty good friend in high school. She told me that she was getting married, and asked if I would be a bridesmaid in her wedding. (We graduated three years ago, and she has made no previous effort to get in touch with me.)

I was happy, thinking that she wanted to rekindle our friendship, and accepted without considering the expense of a new gown, shoes, shower and wedding gifts, and so forth. I have since discovered that she has no interest in a friendship with me, but just needed a bridesmaid. Is it rude to back out three months before the wedding, or at least to ask her to pay for my dress?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners has been meaning to found a labor union for bridesmaids to ensure them decent working conditions, proper uniforms and limited financial liability. At that point, she might take up the matter of severance pay.

What keeps preventing her from getting the job up to business standards is the archaic idea that this is a social situation, strictly between friends, even if many of them fail to act that way.

You, at least, should do so. Having agreed to the job - honor, Miss Manners meant to say - you should fulfill it as best you can. That someone who has once been a good friend to you is behaving badly should not inspire you to follow her example.

Dear Miss Manners: My 5-year-old has a habit of vocalizing his curiosity about people’s abnormalities in public places. What is the appropriate response when placed in this most compromising position?

Gentle Reader: “Darling! You have no idea what you’re saying, and you don’t know how it sounds!” Then, in the moment in which he looks bewildered, because he did have an idea of what he was saying and can’t understand what you are saying, drag him away.

Then you must teach once again (Miss Manners trusts you have been working on this for five years already) that neither honesty nor curiosity justifies voicing thoughts when they are hurtful to others.

Dear Miss Manners: I inherited a great deal of silverware from a great aunt and my mother that is not monogrammed. I also received several pieces as wedding gifts and plan to keep adding pieces. All of this silver is the same pattern.

I wish to have it all monogrammed but do not know which initial to use. I want to pass this collection down to a daughter someday and would like her to be aware of where it all came from. Would it be appropriate to monogram my great aunt’s silver with her initial, my mother’s silver with her initial, and the new additions with mine? If so, do I use the maiden initial of each person or the middle initial?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners is as sentimental as anybody, especially about silver, but there is something that bothers her about retroactive monogramming.

Important as it is that your daughter understand that she will be inheriting the legacy not only of her mother but of her grandmother and great-aunt, does she really need to know which fork came from whom? And if she is that detailed a historian, will she have trouble with the fact that you altered the silver to make it look as if they had done something they had not?

Oh, well, go ahead. Miss Manners supposes it isn’t illegal.

But a monogram consists of three initials, and you have to know whether the large center initial each lady used would have been from her maiden or married surname. It would have depended on which she acquired first, the forks or the breakfast companion.

xxxx

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