Current Trend Not Too Appealing

Dear Miss Manners: “Black tie” is traditionally worn with “soft shirt” while the shirt with wing collar is worn with “white tie.” More and more often today, people seem to be wearing a black tie with a wing-collar shirt. Has the custom changed? What is the appropriate type of shirt to be worn with a black tie?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners also dislikes the look of a wing collar with black tie, but alas, she cannot cite tradition as her reason, nor allow you to do so.

The fact is that the dinner jacket (aka black tie) was invented several years before the softer pleated shirt was invented to go with it. Gentlemen, therefore, continued to wear the starchy shirt that goes with full evening dress, and some never quite stopped.

Miss Manners would consider that sort of old-fashioned absent-mindedness to be endearing if it didn’t make the gentleman appear to have an exceedingly dirty neck. At any rate, it is less culpable than the various turtle-necked and banded-necked attempts to make evening clothes look new-fashioned.

Dear Miss Manners: I know that my friend is demanding and manipulative only because she is insecure, but just because I understand her, it doesn’t mean that I like it when she tries to play games with me.

One of her favorite tactics for achieving gratification (a technique she must have been taught in one of those self-help sessions) is to make me repeat almost everything I say. No matter how clearly I enunciate, her automatic response is usually, “Whaaaaaat?”

Forcing me to repeat myself satisfies her ego on many levels. It gives her the appearance of being the intellectual superior whose important train of thought was interrupted by my banal chatter. It provides her with the illusion that she has me begging for her attention. It puts her in control of the length of time I must spend talking and paying attention to her. Finally, it puts me in the embarrassing position of having to repeat trivial comments such as, “I don’t care for any dessert.”

If she is anywhere within earshot when I am speaking to someone else, she pretends that she thought I was speaking to her, but that she didn’t quite hear me - “Whaaaaaaat?” This forces me to withdraw my attention from the person I was addressing and direct it toward her, or at least, it used to.

Once I realized what she was up to, I learned how to say, very lightly, “Oh, I wasn’t speaking to you,” implying that she needn’t have troubled herself to strain to hear.

After so many years of humoring her, I am increasingly resentful of her taking advantage of my compassion and good manners. I believe that she would have more true friends, and possibly even a relationship, if she weren’t so sly. I don’t feel like playing psychiatrist. Is there a quick, painless way to deflate her?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners suggests you play Ear, Nose and Throat doctor instead, and consider whether your friend actually has trouble hearing. If it really turns out to be only a habit, she will allow you to say, “Oh, it wasn’t important,” instead of repeating yourself.

In any case, it is exceedingly rude to psychoanalyze your friends, especially when they can’t hear what you are saying about them.