Dear Miss Manners,
My wife and I pee in front of each other. We’re both used to it, so that’s not the problem. The reason I’m writing you is this: while seated on the toilet, she often picks her nose.
I say it’s rude to engage in such a disgusting, although common, activity when anyone else can see you, no matter what the circumstances. She says that since she’s already attending to one private bodily function it’s perfectly acceptable to engage in another.
I also think that she’s exploiting an unfair advantage. I can’t reciprocate to balance things out because it pretty much takes both hands to urinate standing up.
So please settle a bet: who’s right? Should she or should she not be permitted to pick her nose? There’s a meal in this for me.
Dear Miss Manners,
I’m in the Mafia. As you probably know, protocol requires those of us who have been formally inducted to introduce non-members to other inductees as “a friend of mine” and to introduce members as “a friend of ours.”
My etiquette question concerns those occasions when I cross paths with a “made” gentleman whom I have not previously met. This happens a lot at funerals. What is the proper way to introduce myself? I have tried saying, “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of yours,” or just “Hello, we’re friends,” but they usually think I’m talking about Facebook. This makes it awkward to steer the conversation away from, say, lolcats to the topic that I actually have in mind, such as moving a truckload of, ah, salvaged goods.
Please advise. Sometimes it’s urgent, like with frozen shrimp.
Dear Miss Manners,
I never have sex with a guy until the third date. This is the way I was raised.
But there’s one thing that Mom and Dad never told me: how many times must I have “run-of-the-mill” sex before moving on to oral activity? Also, is it proper to measure this milestone in nights spent together or in individual sex acts? And if the latter, should I be counting the sex acts themselves or total orgasms? Mine, his or both? It’s not always an even number, if you know what I mean.
As you can see, this is quite a sticky mess. I hope you can clear it up. I’m sure many of your readers often find themselves in the same position as me.
Dear Miss Manners,
Don’t ask how, but I recently happened across some very explicit photos of my former fiancée on a pornographic website called “Coeds Galore.” I feel that it’s my duty to inform her about this but I’m not sure how to go about it, especially since she has repeatedly said (in fact screamed) that she never wants to hear from me again.
If I tell her directly, not only will it violate the terms of the restraining order, but she will probably think I’m the one who submitted the photos, which might not actually be true. So I need you to tell me the proper way to contact her anonymously and share this important information that she has the right to know.
And there¹s something else that bothers me even more: she is not a coed. She never even graduated from high school. As a matter of form, shouldn’t she now be required to enroll in night school or something?
Dear Miss Manners,
Why do so many people seem to be just naturally rude? This baffles me. It literally took me years of near-constant reminding to get my children, husband, siblings, cousins, in-laws, co-workers, neighbors and former classmates to remember to buy me gifts for Mother’s Day, and later, as soon as my son’s girlfriend missed her period, Grandparents Day.
Well that was bad enough, but I doubt that you have ever heard anything as horrendous as what I had to suffer through last week: my cleaning lady didn’t get me a gift for Secretary’s Day! And I assure you it wasn’t out of ignorance: I had “casually mentioned” to her a whole month prior (out of politeness, to give her ample time to find just the right thing) that I once had a summer job as a secretary when I was in college.
Of course I fired her. Isn’t it astonishing how some people only ever think of themselves?
