DEAR ABBY: My husband and I went to a restaurant tonight hoping to enjoy a relaxing evening of quiet conversation. Unfortunately, a man dominated all the conversations in the small restaurant by continually talking in a very loud voice.
The same thing happened several months ago, when our quiet dinner was interrupted by an elderly woman across the room who talked loudly the entire time we were there. She seemed to be hard of hearing, so we felt some sympathy for her. The man tonight, however, seemed to hear just fine.
Abby, if my children were talking that loudly in a public place, I'd admonish them to use their "indoor voices." How do we handle the situation when the loud speaker is an adult and a stranger? -- INDOOR VOICE, PLEASE
DEAR I.V.P.: Few restaurants today offer diners a place to enjoy "a relaxing evening of quiet conversation." The trend in recent years has been to create a "scene" with hustle and bustle and enough noise that the tables can be turned fairly quickly.
If someone was conversing so loudly that I could not enjoy a meal, I would ask the host to be seated elsewhere. And if that didn't solve the problem, I would find another restaurant that was more conducive to the kind of evening I had in mind and patronize that one.