Not All Topics Are Your Business
Dear Miss Manners: I don’t see the point in the frequent practice of airline passengers discussing the price of their tickets with fellow passengers.
If another passenger were to ask me how much I paid for my ticket, I’d be tempted to reply, “I’ll tell you how much I paid, if you’ll tell me how much you make for a living.”
Gentle Reader: Really? Even if Miss Manners told you that the narrow seat you bought to bounce along for an hour or two cost you eleven times what she paid for riding clear across the nation?
All right, you don’t have to be interested in the airlines’ whimsical pricing system. You don’t have to answer any questions from your fellow passengers on any subject. You don’t have to talk to them at all if you dismiss their overtures politely with a vague nod before turning away your attention.
But Miss Manners does ask you to hold that retort. There is a difference between asking questions that are none of one’s business and ones pertaining to business deals in which both parties are currently involved.
Dear Miss Manners: I always feel that I am reacting poorly when my fiance’s friend and his wife come over for a party or meet us for a social outing. It seems that I am always caught off guard by this woman’s attire - which is revealing, to say the least - and am uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.
Her husband does not mind that his wife dresses so provocatively so why should I? Can you suggest a comfortable way for me to handle this situation? Our wedding is around the corner and I shudder to think what this woman will wear to our party.
Gentle Reader: Nobody should be married before coming to terms with the fact that no one person ever has total control over another.
If seeing someone badly dressed will ruin your wedding, you may consider it ruined. Perhaps someone will throw the canary’s cloth over this particular lady as she comes around the corner, but then it will be someone else who is oddly dressed. There may even be a day when you find you cannot talk your husband out of his fondness for clothing that doesn’t meet your standards - although with luck it will not be decency standards that are in question.
What you can do is decide whether or not each person is worth putting up with despite his or her drawbacks. If, after careful consideration of the fact that this is your fiance’s friend, you really find that you cannot bear the friend’s wife, you can arrange to see less of them. What you cannot do is to accept their friendship and then try to view less of her.
Dear Miss Manners: In my neighborhood, I have seen people calling and clapping for their dogs when the dogs are only a few yards away. Why don’t these people just go and get the animal?
Gentle Reader: Are you complaining, or just curious?
Miss Manners would be relieved to hear that it is only curiosity, even though she could offer you no more startling explanation than that it is the custom to call pets rather than fetch them. Children, too, for that matter.
But if you are complaining, what is the complaint? Are these people waking you up in the middle of the night with overamplified broadcasts? In that case, you would be justified by objecting - not to the custom, but to the intrusive noise.
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate