Drop A Postcard With Your Thanks

Dear Miss Manners: My wife’s mother is an inveterate sender of cards: Christmas, of course, but also Easter, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, promotions at work, get-well - the gamut.

My own opinion is that cards (other than condolences) are the rather pedestrian means by which inarticulate and unimaginative members of the bourgeoisie attempt to fulfill some perceived social requisite. However, I realize that my attitude would be perceived as judgmental and elitist; so naturally, I would never dream of voicing it.

How, if at all, should I respond to my mother-in-law’s cards? Writing to thank her seems disingenuous; not responding at all strikes me as impolite; and advising her of just what I think of cards comes off as mean-spirited. Is there an appropriate avenue that does not involve betraying my own principles?

Gentle Reader: Sure. Get a stack of postcards and write her a word of thanks or an occasional nice message in your own dear little hand.

Miss Manners shares your prejudice against greeting cards. She is even stricter than you, in that she believes that the traditional cards, at Christmas and birthdays, should also carry a handwritten note, and she utterly condemns condolence cards as a replacement for the personal attention of a real letter at the time when personal attention is most needed.

But she wishes to disassociate herself from your analysis. The social requisites, as you call them, are expressions of kindness and goodwill that one would be foolishly arrogant to scorn. The trouble with pre-printed cards is not the sentiment, but that the sender isn’t expressing it, only passing on a stranger’s expression of it.

Dear Miss Manners: I enjoy listening to my car stereo, and my husband and I agree on a favorite radio station. But I am not comfortable with forcing a captive passenger to endure the music I enjoy if the poor soul can’t stand my music and is too polite to say so.

When I have another passenger in the car, as when I carpool, or when a friend and I are doing our shopping together, I usually leave the stereo off in an effort to give the subconscious message that the conversation offered would be much more interesting to me than anything I could hear on the stereo.

Is there an etiquette guideline for car stereos? Or am I following an imagined rule that does not exist?

I would hate to find out that I am being a neglectful “host” (if the driver of a carpool can be referred to as such) for not providing my “guests” (if the passengers in a carpool can be likewise referred to) with the entertainment available on my car stereo.

But if I am expected to turn on the stereo, do I leave it on my own favorite station, even if it might offend my “guests”? Or am I required to tune my stereo to their favorite station, even if I don’t like the music? And what do I do if I have more than one passenger in the car, and they each have a different preference? Do we take a majority vote? This whole issue is “driving” me crazy! Can you please advise?

Gentle Reader: Only if you promise to stop making puns like that. It is not nice to drive Miss Manners crazy.

Music is not actually a basic environmental condition that one must provide one’s guests, although a great many people and business establishments seem to think it is. There is a multitude of musical preferences, as you point out; one of which is for silence.

But (to continue your metaphor) a polite host does not have to ask guests to design their own entertainment - only to offer them what the host guesses they might like and to let them take it or leave it.