DEAR MISS MANNERS: When you’ve invited people over for a meal, should you plan for the meal to be ready a little before the guests’ arrival, so you can eat immediately? Or should it be ready a little after their arrival time, so you can budget for all the greetings, niceties, showing them around, etc.?
GENTLE READER: What is the traffic and parking situation in your neighborhood?
Miss Manners is afraid that your guests are in for a lot of overcooked food if you time meals to be ready before the hour you have invited them.
It is not that she condones the absurd notion of being “fashionably late.” Polite guests arrive at or shortly after the designated time.
Cocktail hour was not invented only for the liquor. Whatever kind of drink you serve, you need the time to allow guests to shed their coats and assemble before you lead them to the table.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: If 19th-century “upper crust” Americans thought that aping British aristocracy was the height of sophistication, how is it that the American style of eating (swapping the fork from the right hand to the left, and then back again) became the American standard?
GENTLE READER: Actually, those Americans were using the style of eating prevalent in Europe when their forebears emigrated to the United States, and just didn’t change when Europeans dumbed down the rules.
A note of caution here: It is never the most advantaged layer of society -- aristocrats, or what you call the upper crust -- who welcome change. Being on top, they think things are just fine as they are. Rather, it is those on the rise who seek ways to distinguish themselves from those whose ranks they have risen above.
The fork arrived in England long after it did in Italy and France, and in the 19th century, there were still some landed aristocrats who resisted its use. And when they did use it, it was to replace the knife or spoon hitherto in use in the right hand.
It was the newly rich beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution who invented specialized flatware -- and, unpleasantly, used it as a social test. Aristocrats scorned this as long as they could. But that was only until the prudence of their marrying into the moneyed set became obvious.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please help me politely decline when asked to purchase things for a children’s fundraiser.
While I certainly have no objection to helping a good cause, it is irksome when adult friends call me, expecting a purchase on behalf of grandchildren I don’t even know. They pressure all their friends to make significant purchases, while the kids get no lesson or “entrepreneurial experience.”
Please help with an inoffensive reply.
GENTLE READER: Either “I’ll have half a dozen of those” or “Thank you, no,” depending on whether or not you want the product.
Miss Manners is all for teaching children about business -- just not that they can unload the selling job on others, nor that they can use social pressure to force people to buy things they do not want.