Student Gets An A For Etiquette

Dear Miss Manners: At my high school, there is a dance to which the girls ask the guys, and about a month and a half ago, I asked a friend to go and he said yes. At the same time, a girlfriend of mine asked a guy that both of us had a crush on (she first asked me if it was OK) and he said yes, as well.

My friend’s date is now my boyfriend.

All my friends say that I should explain to my date, who is friends with my boyfriend, that I am now going to this dance with my boyfriend, and he will understand. My girlfriend holds my date in passionate dislike, and refuses to swap dates, but she says she can easily get another date.

I contend that I should go with my original date and my boyfriend should go with my friend, for the sake of etiquette. Besides, I am looking forward to dancing with my friend, and I plan to dance mostly with him - but of course, I will dance one or two slow dances with my boyfriend.

Gentle Reader: Did you say “for the sake of etiquette?” Miss Manners has to still her fluttering heart.

It is not just that you recognize that etiquette - and not just your preferences - must be considered. What thrills her even more is that you understand not only the rule of etiquette, but the mannerly principle underlying it.

The rule is: Never cancel a social engagement because a better one comes along - even so much better a one as romance.

This rule exists not only because canceling disrupts the plans of others, but because it hurts their feelings. However much they may claim to “understand” - and what else can a rejected person say? - they do not.

Or rather, they understand only too well that you have deserted them for something better. (Being deserted for something worse - illness - is something they do understand.) This dampens a friendship and you appear to have a very nice friendship with your date.

Miss Manners has only one thing to add to your masterful solution:

Would you consider going into the etiquette business after you finish your education?

Dear Miss Manners: To what extent does engaging in civil disobedience grant one a license to inconvenience and act rudely toward others?

I recall what my mother used to say about having any opinion I could defend, but to keep a civil tongue in my head. How is one supposed to do that, faced with indifference, bigotry and discrimination?

I put forward the nonviolent protest model of King and Gandhi, but admit that progress with such forms of protest is slow at best. What about the methods of such groups as Act Up and Queer Nation? If people are literally dying in the streets and time is critical, how far should a person go?

It is easy to ask this question and it can’t be easily answered.

Gentle Reader: True, so perhaps you will be kind enough to allow Miss Manners to ask you some other questions. These concern ideas that you seem to take for granted, but which are not quite so obvious to Miss Manners.

Do you believe that you can do better than Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi, each of whom radically changed his entire society and altered the way human beings think and behave?

Do you believe that they could have accomplished this in a fraction of the time, or won over more people, if they had behaved nastily instead?

Do you believe that you will have more success if you humiliate and threaten people? Have you noticed that public intimidation, which admittedly has dramatic effect in the short run, also rarely provokes the kind of change of heart and mind that produces long-term change?

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