Squabbling Over Space Waste Of Time
Dear Miss Manners: I once returned from college to find my old bedroom painted pink and my sister’s things firmly planted in it. When I turned and opened the door to the guest room, I found my things - in much better order than I had left them. I felt kind of bad, but I certainly didn’t argue. It wasn’t my house.
My sister is married and gone now, and I’ve returned - with my husband. Domestic issues are not a problem as long as we remember who owns the house and give respect and deference where it is due.
(No, we didn’t get my old room back.)
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners hopes that you realize that you have seriously violated a tradition of family life. When parents so much as replace a chair in the room of a child who has moved away, even if it was years ago and the child has his or her own house, custom requires that it set off an emotional rampage.
Not having a permanent shrine is considered the basis for fruitful family discussions, such as “I bet you were glad to get rid of me” and “You always did love her more.”
Miss Manners congratulates you on foregoing this opportunity. By conceding that your family should enjoy the extra room, you have also made room in your psyche for more interesting topics.
Dear Miss Manners: My brother visits me stoned. I have told him he is not welcome when he is doing drugs. He agreed not to bring his habit into my life; however, he does. I do not stop him at the door, as I do not become aware that he is stoned until he has been here a short time.
Then what? His wife and my husband are present. I do not want to embarrass everyone, however, I cannot let this disrespect go on either, never mind the fact I am worried sick that he will have an accident on his way home.
Gentle Reader: Heaven knows that Miss Manners is prone to defining everything wrong in the world as being an etiquette problem, but she is having trouble doing so here. It seems to her that what your brother has is not so much an etiquette problem as a drug problem.
It is true that showing disrespect to you would be an etiquette problem, but this would require intent, and Miss Manners doubts that your brother’s motive in getting stoned is to annoy you. And while your fear of embarrassing him would be an etiquette problem, she also doubts that your brother’s wife and your husband are unaware of the situation, or even that he thinks they are.
She suggests that the family take whatever steps it can to get your brother cured of his habit. Etiquette’s contribution is to supply euphemisms (having to do with vague sicknesses and problems) to protect your brother’s, and indeed the whole family’s, privacy from unwarranted curiosity.
Dear Miss Manners: At a dinner party for seven in what is supposed to be the best restaurant in Boston, we were all consistently served from the right throughout the meal. We were seated at a round table, with easy access to all places. Is this not an egregious breach of etiquette?
Gentle Reader: A breach of etiquette, yes. An egregious breach, no. Egregious is when your food is served onto your lap.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate