DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I are aware that when dining, etiquette dictates that gristle is placed on the side of one's plate. However, I think that it is unappetizing and downright disgusting to stare at gristle (mine or someone else's) at the dinner table. How can something so gross be proper?

At home, I ask my husband to place his in a napkin and dispose of it in the garbage. When we are dining at a friend's house or a restaurant, I ask him to keep it in a folded section of his napkin. He humors me, but believes I am breaking the rules.

Is my modified rule acceptable, or am I simply too squeamish? Who thought up this rule?

GENTLE READER: The Etiquette Council's Subcommittee on Gross. It is pretty squeamish itself, and ran from the room at the thought of opening a napkin for the laundry and finding chewed gristle in it.

Miss Manners does not advise trying to coax the council members back by saying you were planning to use a paper napkin. They are squeamish about that, too. Their parting advice was for you to trim the meat in the kitchen as best you can, and refrain from staring into your husband's plate.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: At Wimbledon time, we're always subjected to the sight of American tennis players bowing or curtseying to the royals in the box! I thought it was inappropriate for Americans to bow to foreign royalty under any circumstances. But my co-workers tell me it would be very bad manners for the Americans not to do so because the tennis players are not there in an official government capacity.

I say it doesn't make any difference. I recall a flap in Washington some years ago when the wife of the American ambassador to Great Britain was photographed curtseying to the queen, and she was severely criticized for it. What do you say?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners blushes to have to say that she is the one who caused that flap, back in her days as an intrepid young reporter. She thought it her duty to reassure the nation that we had not, in fact, reverted to colonial status, when we would have to bow down before temporal leaders.

Although your co-workers are quite incorrect, Miss Manners cannot agree with you that it makes no difference. This gesture is not an ordinary bit of foreign etiquette one might adopt out of courtesy when traveling. It is a sign of obeisance. Even the British do not perform this to any royalty but their own. Americans do not properly bow to any royalty. We show respect for other countries' leaders the same way we do to our own, except that we give them the added courtesy of not telling them how to run their respective governments.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my mother died of cancer, I had a lovely service for her in her church. Her "beau" of 26 years had a reception following at his country club, and graciously accepted thanks from my daughter and I, and from the guests. Now, he has come to me and asked me to pay half the cost.

When she was dying, he had asked me to return the custom-designed diamond ring he had made for her early in their courtship. He said that some of the stones had come from his first wife's ring. My mother was too lost on morphine, too weak and only able to say "yes" or "no," but she still understood what was going on.

How should I respond to these requests? The estate is small, under the taxable limit, but I expect that I, as the sole beneficiary because I am the only relative, might be considered to have "money to pay" in this case.

GENTLE READER: "Money to pay off" might be more the way to think about it. What this person is practicing is a sort of social blackmail: He is asking for things to which he is not entitled, knowing that embarrassment will cloud your thinking.

Note that this is an etiquette opinion, not a legal one. Socially, one cannot appoint a co-host retroactively, nor claim back presents whose sentimental claim to the giver has just been recalled after 26 years. So, there is no question of propriety that should make you feel pressured to do this. But you should find out whether he can make enough of a claim on the estate to make a further nuisance of himself.

Miss Manners' own inclination would be to pay for the entire wake, out of contempt for his participation in it -- in exchange for a binding agreement that he not continue to annoy you -- but to keep the ring -- to annoy him.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I work with a group of women who have a question about communication with our new boss. He has a very serious stutter that occasionally makes some of us uncomfortable because we do not know how to respond. When he gets "stuck" on a letter for as long as 15 to 20 seconds, do we continue to make eye contact, look at the ground or try to finish his sentence for him? Please help with some advice on communicating with someone who stutters.

GENTLE READER: Are you telling Miss Manners that 20 seconds is too much of your valuable time to waste waiting to hear what your boss has to say? Especially since you can apparently anticipate everything he is going to say? More to the point, is that what you want to tell your boss?

Miss Manners would think that prudence would suggest, as politeness requires, that you maintain eye contact with your boss when he is addressing you. It is the content of what he says, not his stutter, that requires a response.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: While at college, I maintained contact via e-mail with a boy with whom I graduated from high school. He and I are not good friends, although we get along fairly well, and the e-mail arrangement worked quite well.

However, now that I am home for the summer, he calls every day, managing, somehow, to time the call exactly as I am getting out of bed. He wants to get together. Our conversations run something like this:

He: Do you want to hang out?

Me: No, I'm sorry.

He: Why?

Me: I can't.

He: Why not?

Me: I have things to do.

He: What do you have to do?

At this point, I have a problem due to the fact that the only thing I really have to do is think of an excuse why I can't see him. The way in which he questions me makes it impossible for me to simply decline. If I say that I have a prior engagement, he wants to know what, where, with whom and for how long it will last.

The basic fact of the matter is that I find him boring and don't enjoy his company, but I can't tell him that! In the past week, I have resorted to lying about my plans to avoid seeing him, but I feel guilty about this.

Is there any polite way to express my lack of interest? I can't make up excuses all summer long. I'm running out of ideas.

GENTLE READER: Here are some: Caller ID. Telling him his calls are disturbing the household. Both of those, along with the suggestion that he return to communicating with you by e-mail, allow you to delay answering and ignore impertinent questions.

But Miss Manners observes from the example of your dialogue that you are pretty good at the non-excuse reply, which is all that is needed. You just gave up on the technique too early. It should have continued:

You: Lots of things. In fact, I have to go right now.

He: When will you be finished?

You: Well, I hope by the time I have to go back to college in the fall. It's going to be a busy summer. I hope you have a nice summer, and I'm sorry that I won't have a chance to see you. 'Bye.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My son, who is gay, will be visiting my wife and me for a weekend in the summer, and he is bringing his boyfriend along. They have been together for two years, but have never visited before. When my daughter visits with her boyfriend, they share the same room.

I am unsure if the boys want to share a room, or if this arrangement will be uncomfortable to my wife. I don't want to raise an issue if there isn't one, so the solution I have come up with is to make up both guest rooms and let my son decide, and let my wife know that this should be our son's decision.

GENTLE READER: No, you really don't want to raise the issue, as the example of your wife's not minding cohabitation with boyfriends is so close at hand. Even your solution goes a tad too far.

All you need do is to tell your wife that you have made up both bedrooms. Miss Manners trusts it will not be necessary to dissuade her from patrolling the halls at night.

: