So let’s all pounce (why don’t we?) on the menu, which was vegan; and which we would or would not have served, had we been throwing the reception; and which we would or would not have eaten, had we been there. Which we were not.

Most amusing to me was, in the “Style” section in this past Sunday’s New York Times, a comment from a fellow who lives in Attleboro, Mass. (I know a little about Attleboro, since I have an aunt who lived there, for a number of years, along with her second husband. I tend to get it confused with West Virginia.) Who knows how the  NYT found this fellow?  His name is Patrick Moore, and he remembered once showing up at a wedding reception where all the food was vegetarian, which led him to run across the street to a sandwich shop, leaving his gift in the car, along with his half-eaten sandwich, before he went in to the party.

In retrospect, Mr. Moore told the Times, “I know it’s your day, but it’s not all about you….Why have a wedding if you’re going to be like that? Just print a bumper sticker?” I, for one, am at a loss as to what such a bumper sticker might say. Perhaps it could be personalized: “I’m Patrick Moore / I didn’t eat the food at Julie and Brian’s reception.”

A number of questions arise here:

– If one is invited to a large party where the menu is vegan or vegetarian, and if the offering is hearty enough (and providing one doesn’t have any allergies to nuts or corn syrup), why should one care?

– If one is a non-paying guest at a large party where nothing on the menu is offensive to one — for dietary, ethical or ideological reasons — why should one be questioning the menu, at all?

– If one hates the food, and simply chooses not to eat it, why can’t one simply stop by a drive-thru and pick up a burger — or something else, somewhere more appropriate — on the way home?

– Meanwhile, why was Patrick Moore from Attleboro, Mass., taking his gift to the wedding reception, in the first place? (One never does that, does one? Properly, the gift is always sent ahead.) Which leads me to ask:

– Who’s he to complain?

A wedding reception is a large party like any other large party. The fact that one has been invited doesn’t mean that one will be able to, or want to, eat everything (or anything) on the buffet. One may, in fact, leave hungry, and have to fend for one’s self. (If one has any fears, grabbing a nosh ahead of time is never a bad idea. Such is always a gentleman’s fallback position.)

Chelsea and Marc’s reception was different, I know, since the guests were stuck out there in Rhinebeck, N.Y., without a handy White Castle. But I seriously doubt you and I were invited to that party, were we?

Please scan the menu and send me a copy, should you happen to have made the list, particularly if you had any dietary difficulties.

– John

Yes, Steven Slater was wrong. But wouldn’t you have liked to be him, just for that moment? It’s a moment out of Airplane, or Airplane II. (I cherish the image, unsafe and unwarranted though it may be, of Slater grabbing a beer, punching the button, and sliding down the safety chute.)

You know the moment. It’s the moment when the jerk sitting next to you won’t turn off the his (or her) cell phone, even though the flight attendant has said, repeatedly, “Please turn off all cell phones.” It’s the moment when, although the flight attendants have said, “Please remain in your seats until the plane has safely reached the gate,” some jerk gets up and starts jerking his (or her) bag out of the bin, even before the cabin lights have been turned on.

I’m not apologizing for Steven Slater, whom I’ve never met. I know flight attendants can be rude, beyond words; and I know Steven Slater faces felony charges, so I’m not taking sides in the case.

Steven Slater, and his passenger, certainly ate up a lot of time for everybody. Didn’t they?

And they still do. Don’t they?

Neither of them followed the rules, remotely precisely.

But still — although he’s out of a job — don’t you envy Steven Slater?

Just a tiny bit?

– John

I live in Nashville, where we’ve been suffering the duress of major flooding, ever since this past weekend.

The theory is that, as the water level rises, everybody rises to the occasion, and everybody’s best behavior rises to the surface. (At least that’s what we see on CNN, when a dog is trapped on the roof of an SUV.)

I fear that is not alway so.

This past Sunday, fellow homeowners and I devoted three full hours to mopping out and swabbing up the muck in the lobby of the condo building where we live. Throughout the process, another homeowner strolled amongst the mix of us, talking on her cell phone. (The legend was that she was maintaining contact with our building’s Maintenance Engineer.)

Once the initial cleaning was done, and once the swabbing/mopping team had decided it was time to hose down the entryways, the homeowner-on-her-cell-phone stepped in and said, “You know, I’m not truly comfortable with what you’re doing, right now.”

To which my response, looking up through the spray of my hose, was, “Go home.”  And so she went.

Even a gentleman, mop-in-hand, has his limits.

Did I do the right thing? (Of course, I did.)

Even when sandbags are being hoisted, hand to hand, it is never wrong to say, “Thank you,” even if a grunt gets in the mix.

– John/

Elizabeth Post did not descend in direct lineage from Emily Post, that magisterial, well-born, self-invented, self-appointed source of all things proper, decorous, and acceptable. She was, in fact, a grand-daughter-in-law. (A tough spot to be caught in, if you’re part of an etiquette dynasty.)

The dicta of the initial Emily Post were almost invariably targeted at the dream world of the emerging bourgeoursie. The unwritten message, of course, was that, if you pretended to be anybody, you were intent on having “manners.”

On the other hand, if you actually were somebody, and had been born that way, you could make up your own”manners” as you drove along. You could put your fork down anywhere you pleased, and the butler would pick it up, and put it where it might most conveniently go, considering the inevitability of the course next to come.

The fascination with “proper behavior” seems to have had its birth in the Edwardian era, just around the first turn of the past century, when the classes started to mingle, when the then-Prince of Wales and his mistresses consented to dine with barristers, the lower nobility, and even the better-known theatricals. The rising middle class began to mimic that behavior and keep track of where every fork was placed, how many waistcoat buttons might be left unbuttoned, and how an unapologetic, lordly belch might be stifled behind the mask of a damask napkin. His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, never said, “Excuse me,” or “Pardon me,” of course.

The class of gentlemen who grew up around him, and who wandered about, slim in their good suits, but lost in his bulky, overwhelming shadow, spent much of their time saying “Excuse me,” and “Pardon me,” to people they had never met.

And thus “manners,” as we know them, were born, and Emily Post, recently divorced but immaculately credentialed, lept into the breach, decreeing where there had been no decrees before, laying down the foundations for inferiority complexes that are still be sorted out by high-school guidance counselors and board-certified psychoanalysts.

The first Mrs. Post never made her peace with the concept of a house completely lacking in servers; it was only her spin-off successor, Amy Vanderbilt, who, trading upon the cachet of her own bourgeouis married name, dealt with hostesses who might actually have to cook their own dinners and hire in people to serve them, (In the worst of circumstances, they might also have to cook and serve, both at once, depending on the husband to mix the cocktails, and if he was sober enough, to pour the wine.)  A Vogue etiquette guide published in 1948, under the putative editorship of Millicent Fenwick, took the issue even farther down the slope. Ladies were even instructed in the stirring of cocktails. Single ladies were even given guidelines about entertaining, on their own, provided an available gentleman could be elbowed in to stir the Manhattans.

Elizabeth Post took on an even more treacherous task, since she was merely a grand-daughter in law.  Well-bred and well-heeled, she was an interloper, nonetheless, always faced with the challenge of living up to her grandmother-in-law’s grandeur. She was a Post, but only by marriage; her genes were not fossilized. Always evolving, because she had to, almost inevitably at the behest of her editors, she took up the letter knife bravely, ditching what seemed antiquated, upgrading what might be made even more elegant, making the world a trifle more understandable for brides-to-be who have been living with their fiances for the past five-and-a-half years.

I doubt it is a task she cottoned to kindly, in every instance.

So, this evening when you are at dinner with a loved one, turn off your cell phone for at least a few minutes. In those few minutes, I trust, the soul of Elizabeth Post will know at least a modicum of peace. And her grandmother-in-law will finally approve. Or maybe not.

– John

One, fiercely engraved, says:

Mr. and Mrs. Herrick Kinsley Postough

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

Marryanne Eugienne

to

Mr. Jeremey Allan Glanzich

Saturday, the sixth of June

Two thousand and ten

at six o’clock

Church of the Best Birthings

856 Interbred Road

Tautly, Connecticut

Then there is another, simply thermographed, with an entanglement of wedding rings dancing round its margin:

Ms. CAUSELINE ROBERTA INGAWE THOMAS

and Mr. ALBERTO FRANZ DiFOCCO

along with THEIR CHILDREN (from a number of previous marriages)

cordially invite YOU to join THEM

as they SOLEMNIZE their

REAFFIRMING PERSONALLY SACRED VOWS OF HOLY MATRIMONY

June 6, 2010

(Saturday, starting at 5 p.m.; continuing until closing)

Monimo’s Gyros Take-Out and Kurdish Dip Bar

528-K 4326 E.128 St.

New York, NY.

(Cash bar only.)

Please R/S/V/P at causeline@becauseitsdifocconow.com

What is one supposed to do, when such invitations appear out of nowhere, briskly pinned up on the cork board in the office break room?

One may assume that Margienne’s invite, deeply engraved, is stuck there simply for purposes of information, intimidation and the setting down of boundaries.

Causeline’s invitation may be asking for something more — especially if it’s accompanied by a sign-up list for the

“IT Office Pot-Luck Lunch and Second-Time-Around Wedding Shower,”

honoring “Causeline“.

and “Alberto”.

focusing on wine and

gifts they might use for their children, ages 9-13

(registered at Target.com, including kitchen utensils)

Large Break Room

11:30=12:30 EST

Please sign on, below.

Guests are requested to clean up after themselves.

Must you sign on? (Of course not.)

Must you show up for the party? (No, especially if you have no interest in being involved in any office wedding showers, ever again.)

Must you bring a gift, if  you show up for the party?  (Not necessarily, since, in many instances, the dictum is “your presence is your present.” A fruitless and ineffectual dictum, if there ever was one. It’s useful, always,  to stop by the wine store, or by a shop that hawks clever cocktail napkins.)

What’s more, if you don’t take a present to the party, age-old propriety maintains that you don’t eat the cake. That’s the basic trade-off.

Age-old propriety is full of itself.

Go to the party. (Go on-line; send Causeline the Target-store garbage can she’s been dreaming of.)

Eat the cake.

– John

With good reason, cover blurbs such as these are also known as “teasers.” But Vanity Fair, making good on its pledge, comes through with a spread of full-page, professional-makeup-artist-styled portraits of at least a limited cross-section of Tiger’s girlfriends. Some of them are wearing underwear. At least one of them, I’m pretty certain, is not. Almost all the photos are shot in the restaurants, or in the bedrooms. or, even more egregiously, in the hallways leading to ill-specified hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, I’m distinctly uncertain whether”girlfriend” is the term I’m looking for in this instance, precisely.  (Maybe you can help me think of the word.) “Mistress” doesn’t quite do it. “Mistresses” traditionally maintain at least a modicum of decorum and can command at least some fragile claim on a gentleman’s commitment. (Think of Susan Hayward in Backstreet.) What’s more, “mistresses” know how to keep their mouths shut — maybe out of some misguided, self-flagellating sense of loyalty, or maybe as a means of just making sure their mortgage payments continue to get covered.

But nobody these days, whether they’re part of the John-Rielle-Elizabeth triangle or a participant in the Sandra-Jesse-Michelle trifecta, seems to have any resistance to the temptation to talk, especially when a hot microphone is within shouting distance, when there’s a seat available on Oprah’s sofa, or when there might even possibly be a book deal in the offing. And it’s hard to tell who’s most at fault — the feckless and the forsaken who can’t manage to keep their mouths shut, or the rest of us who can’t resist the urge to eavesdrop.

Maybe the question that needs to be asked of everybody — the philanderers, their ill-used other halves, and the rest of us who just can’t stop flipping through In Touch at the check-out counter — is “Have we no shame?”

Vanity Fair knows, of course, the wry-making irony of putting Princess Grace on the cover of its “Tiger’s Girlathon” issue. Grace Kelly was nobody’s fragile flower. (Nobody seems quite sure how many of her leading men she slept with; she seems to have felt no particular urge to say whether she did or didn’t — grown-up, inexpressibly beautiful people of her age simply screwed around, and nobody seems to have dared to have pressed the awkward questions — how often, and if ever, and with whom?.) It’s stunning, by today’s standards, to note that, as young Miss Kelly, Oscar winner and fiancee to the Monagasque Prince Ranier, could actually pursue their multi-continental courtship in 1956, writing actual letters back and forth to each other, with nobody–at least as far as we know — steaming open the envelopes.

Imagine such intimacy. Imagine such privacy. Imagine the naughtinesses lost forever, before the advent of e-mail.

In tiny print, up in the right hand corner of its current cover, Vanity Fair quotes a couple of lines from W.B. Yeats. “The innocent and the beautiful,” Yeats says, ‘Have no enemy but time.” Grace Kelly seems to have known how to stop the clock.

For the rest of this crowd, it’s still ticking.

– John

The cousins (let’s call them Calvin and Blanche, since, having actual names of their own, they truly do exist) have been married forever — at least 40 years. All that time, it appears, they’ve been eating off each other’s plates, both at home and in public. I, for one, have actually seen them do it —  at Minerva’s house, at their own house, and at fine restaurants in major cities, all across our fair nation.

There appears to be an unspoken agreement between the two of them. Blanche takes a few bites from her entree and then slides her plate across to Calvin. Forthwith, Calvin takes a forkful of Blanche’s poached salmon and shifts the plate back toward her. Being more adventurous of spirit, she then stretches across the table and dips into Calvin’s boeuf bourguignon, holding her napkin under her soup spoon, so as not to dribble on the linen. Then they look at each other and say either “Mmmm…” or “Mmmm?”

In short order, and after a swift swallow of wine, they return to their own dishes. Until the dessert course arrives, nothing else is shared across the course of the evening, except polite conversation.

It drives Minerva crazy. (“Why can’t they just eat their own food?!!?” she’s been known to screech in the cab riding home from a restaurant.) And it would drive me crazy, too, if this weren’t such a ritual for Calvin and Blanche, a rudeness they’ve fine-tuned down to the point of high art. They handle it subtly, and rather elegantly, to tell the truth. Hardly anybody notices, except perhaps for probing eyes who have very little to pay attention at their own tables.

What would drive me crazy, however, would be if Calvin and Blanche — on a first date, or four decades into their marriage — were heard asking each other, “What does that taste like?” “May I have a bite of that?” or, worst of all, “You’re not going to eat all of that, are you?”

Such questions suggest a hunger that cannot be healed by the size of any portion on any plate. They also bespeak disturbing lacks of self-confidence, self-reliance and self-discipline.

In such cases, the fellow diner is perfectly correct in asking — even if it’s something he’s been asking for the past 40 years — “Would you like to order something else?”

The answer, almost inevitably, will be, “No. Of course not. I’m loving my poached tripe on cheese grits. I’m sure the second bite will be wonderful.”

To which the well-thought-out response will be, “Waiter! May we take another look at the menu?”

Even amongst the closest of friends, the trading of tidbits is a questionable practice. Who will know, at the end of the meal, how to divvy up the tab? Who will have been keeping track of the spoonfuls of boeuf bourguignon? Who will be counting the shrimp in the scampi?

Friendships have been parted over smaller things. Reputations have been ruined by considerably less.

– John/

I know it’s not an uncommon experience, but it’s the first time it’s happened to me. My son, who’s 6, was part of a sleep-over party at a friend’s house last week. When he got home, there was a red spot on his arm. It looked like a bug bite, so I checked him out. What I found was something that looked like a bedbug crawling around under the collar of his shirt. The mother who was hosting the party is scrupulous when it comes to cleanliness, so I know she doesn’t want bugs crawling around in her house; but I don’t want to embarrass her. What can I do?

The bug-bite — bedbug or not — may have come from anywhere, or from the sleeping bag of any kid cuddled up at the party. (Is there no possible chance your own kid was the carrier? Have you checked out your own mattress pads?)

Every mother involved in the spend-the-night needs to be informed; but it’s not your job to alarm the entire guest list.  Your responsibility — which is tough enough, in and of itself — is to call the host-mother and say, “Tom-Tom had a great time at your house the other night. When he got home on Saturday morning, however, he had what looked like a bug-bite on his arm. Later in the day, I found a little critter crawling around on his collar.

“Have you heard any similar reports from any of the other boys?”

Inevitably, the mother-in-question will say, “No! My goodness! What a horrible thing!” In the absolutely best of instances, she will say, “Oh! My goodness! What a horrible thing! Let me check on this!” (Unless she is uncleanly by habit, she will be stunned by this revelation; and it will take a few seconds for the reality to sink in.)

It is not your responsibility to contact all attendant mothers, asking “Did you hear that my tiny Tom-Tom got a bedbug bite at Mikey’s?” It is the responsibility of the hostess-mother to run through the roster, if she chooses to do so.

Your only responsibility is to decide whether you want to risk Tom-Tom’s sleeping bag-to-bag with Mikey, ever again.

This is a situation best handled directly by phone. E-mail is a bad option, since it offers a “Reply All” to all the mothers involved.

And every mother’s business is her own.

–John/

“Last night, I threw my Oscars party. I did all the food, except for the part of it that people brought, just because they wanted to. Drinks-wise, I asked everybody to BYOB. Almost everybody brought wine. [One friend; let's not give his name] brought a jug of not-so-good Merlot; so it never got opened, all night long. When it came time to leave, he picked up his jug and went home — no explanations, no apologies, no nothing. How rude is that?”

A BYOB invite always begs for mixed blessings, of course.

Not only does it empower people to drink more than they ought to — since they’re consuming their own hooch (so who’s counting?) — it also leads to an unseemly confusion:

Should I — acting like a graduate-school student — scrawl my name on a bit of masking-tape and and stick it across my personal bottle of vodka? (I’d seem chintzy if I did that. Wouldn’t I?) Meanwhile, if I’d really like another cocktail, and, if it’s not all that late in the evening, while unscrupulous others have already emptied my fifth of good Scotch? (I ought to have a right to somebody else’s rot-gut? Shouldn’t I?)

If almost everybody is bringing a bottle of wine for the evening, and if some bottles don’t get opened, it’s perfectly all right for [One Friend; Let's Not Give His Name] or anybody else, to take home his unopened bottle.

[One Friend; Let's Not Give His Name] may have decided that his wine was too fine to be wasted on the company at hand. Or he may simply have decided that it’s time to take home his unopened bottle.

This was a BYOB party, after all.

A wrong idea from the beginning; so any judgment calls are iffy.

To make matters worse, the recycling of bottles is unlikely.

John/

Sometimes when you see someone in person after you haven’t seen them in a long time, you might not recognize them right away. Whether we want to admit it or not, some of us have changed over the years

Hair changes. Cheeks change. Jaws change. Teeth change.  Anything can change, hour by hour, day by day  – even without the assistance of a surgeon or a hair-dresser, even without the assistance of a well-meaning .

A glitter in the eye remains the same, always, as a means of welcome.  A nod or a mild wave across the air can most often cover the reach of an uncomfortable room.

If a gentleman friend appears healthy, and has trimmed down, it’s always right to cheer him on by saying, “Well, Eric, you’re certainly looking fit.” To which he will usually respond by saying, “Thanks. I’ve been working on it.” If such is not the case — and if he has lost weight for some reason he’d rather not talk about — he will say, “Thanks. And how are you?”

If a lady friend has lost weight, or if her hair color has changed, or if her jawline has been joisted up to a point where she is virtually unrecognizable, she is usually aware of that fact, and will go ahead and re-introduce herself, even to some semi-intimate acquaintances. If one is forced into the most discomforted of corners, where there is no possible means of remembering the lady’s name, the only appropriate greeting is a quick kiss followed by, “Don’t you look wonderful?” or “I love you in purple!” or “You’ve got to tell me about that pin!”

“I’m on my way to the bar. Will you come with me?” provides a ready escape from almost any awkward encounter, in passing, with a lady left alone.

Then one can only pray for another person to come along — a person with a name one actually knows — so that one can say to his lady-friend, “I want you to meet my friend Bobo Highsworth.” To which one can only pray that the re-done lady will pitch in and say, as she would appropriately do in any social situation, “Hello, Bobo. I’m Angela Taughtely. It’s so nice to meet you.” If the introducer is left foundering in absolutely desperate straits, his last resort (or his first resort, if he sees trouble brewing, from afar) is to chat amongst the three of them, for just the space of a breath, and then say, “I’m sure you know each other.”

In the most potentially awkward of situations, a gentleman’s only out is to say, ”You’re going to have to forgive me. I fear you’re going to have to introduce yourselves.”

But a gentleman can only do that once in a lifetime, with any one pair of acquaintances.

Otherwise, he will have to find a corner where he can stand by himself, until his friend Angela Taughtely draws him into the room and says, “You do know my friend Bobo Highsworth. Don’t you?”

–John/