Manners Depend On Who Friend Is

Dear Miss Manners: I’m an 11-year-old girl. My father and friend were watching a really scary movie on TV, and my dad kept telling me not to read. I finally admitted that I didn’t want to watch the movie, and he said, “Why didn’t you just tell us that?”

I think it’s rude to end other people’s fun if you can amuse yourself without bothering them. Who’s right?

Gentle Reader: You have such a keen sense of manners that Miss Manners is going to give you an advanced lesson in the complications of applying even such excellent rules as the one you cite.

To do this, she is going to suggest two sets of possible circumstances in which your question may have occurred. Neither of them may really fit your situation. She just wants to show you how the same action can be the right one under some conditions and not so right under others.

Suppose, for example, that you were spending an ordinary evening at home. Your mother is working late, and your father and his college roommate, who has been visiting for a week, decide to watch a movie. If you don’t want to watch, it would be considerate not to disparage their fun, but to occupy yourself doing something else.

But suppose that your parents were divorced and you were spending limited time with your father and a romantic partner of his, whom he wants you to like. He has put on a movie, not because he particularly wanted to see it, but because he thought it would be something the three of you could do together. It would still be clumsy of him to attempt cajoling you into watching. But it would be kinder and more tactful of you to suggest that you all do something else together.

Dear Miss Manners: A most perplexing, frustrating situation occurred to me today in regard to a doctor’s appointment scheduled more than three weeks ago.

Instead of a reminder phone message, which many practices provide today, I received a message to call the doctor’s office so that they would know I was going to show up for the appointment. If I did not call, my appointment would be canceled, the message said. The message was less than cordial.

So, of course, I called, because I didn’t want to show up and have no appointment. But I pointed out to the person who answered that they had this backward. Normally, one calls to cancel if he or she cannot make the appointment - barring death or accidents, of course. As I had not called, the office should expect my appearance.

Actually, I thought the message was unwarranted and poorly handled. What do you make of it? I thought it rude of them to assume that someone would not show up. Wouldn’t a reminder have done just as well?

Gentle Reader: In a responsible world, yes. But we are talking about a society where people pride themselves on their spontaneity. This means that you can’t even be sure that guests expected for dinners or weddings will actually show up. And those are your friends.

Miss Manners is glad that you believe in keeping your commitments. But she cannot bring herself to denounce a method of coping with the unfortunate fact that many people do not.