DEAR MISS MANNERS: Since there's no longer a "his" towel (actually, I no longer see those "his and hers" sets that were popular several decades past), how can I make it clear that the towels on the rack are mine?

My place is small, hence the one bathroom must serve for both my guests and myself. Though space is limited, I do have a basket of hand towels always available for their use. I wish some of my friends would do the same. There have been times I've dried my hands on my petticoat rather than the much used "my" towel hanging in their bathrooms.

Rather than insult them by labeling the basket "For Guests" (and some friends and family do not consider themselves "guests"), what can I do? Short of standing guard and directing them to use the guest towels, (which isn't practical when I am busy elsewhere with other guests), or simply removing all but the guest towels from that room (which also is not practical, as I often have -- and do heartily welcome! -- drop-in guests), how do I inform them that the towels in the basket are for their use?

Some of my family and friends are aware of the protocol and do use guest towels without being offended, but then another dilemma occurs: What to do with the used guest towel? In my instance, there is enough space on the vanity top to leave the used/damp towels, but is there a better solution for those of us who practice good hygiene along with hospitality? When I am elsewhere and they do provide guest towels, but there just isn't an empty spot to place it, what do I do with the used towel?

GENTLE READER: Could someone please explain to Miss Manners how the guest towel got to be the great totem of modern times? She can't wait to hear the part about why people think it is more polite to allow their hosts to realize, when they clean up after the visit, how many hands they have shaken that were apparently never washed after use.

It strikes her that if people were to exercise only one form of self-restraint out of consideration for others, they might pick something better. Such as not scooting into parking spaces that other people are already positioned to back into.

Use the guest towels, folks. That's why they're called guest towels. And leave them crumpled on the rack or sink or basket, so the host can put them in the wash when you have left after a hygienic embrace.

Efforts to cure guests of this inhibition have been pitiful. Some hosts put out small terry cloth towels in the hope that guests will think they use them for quick baths of their own, and that therefore anyone is free to grab them. Or paper ones, with the idea that the guests will figure they can destroy the evidence of their transgression, although not, one hopes, by making these disappear into the plumbing.

There are even hosts who have gone over the brink themselves and go in for a horror they call a "decorator towel" put out to tantalize guests who are not expected to use it.

Miss Manners is afraid the taboo may be too powerful. She suggests removing your bath towel when you have warning, and, when you don't, issuing your own warning by calling out, "I'm afraid I've left my bath towel there -- but there are towels for you in the basket."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I are expecting our first child, and cousins from both our families are asking me if there will be a baby shower. So far, no one has offered to host one. (Both of our mothers are deceased.) What is the proper response?

GENTLE READER: "Why, no" (said pleasantly), "I don't believe there will be."

Miss Manners won't allow you to say, "No, so why don't you give one?" and anyway, relatives should not give showers for one another. There is nothing to prevent them from giving a little party within the family, but plenty wrong with your helping them think of doing so.

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Are football fans mature enough to be allowed to go wild?

Perhaps you have trouble believing that Miss Manners would be acquainted with the appeal of being in the midst of an exuberant and opinionated crowd that is expressing itself with uninhibited fury one minute and unrestrained glee the next.

Perhaps you have never been to the opera.

As a survivor of many an opera house fracas, where cast substitutions, scores with the effrontery to be younger than the patrons, and a mixture of fans with divided loyalties have been known to whip audiences into frenzies, she could teach the football crowd a thing or two.

Somebody should. They are not behaving at all well. Imagine throwing plastic beer bottles onto the field just because they disagreed with a decision! You don't find opera buffs throwing their plastic champagne glasses onto the stage just because they disagree with an interpretation, do you?

Of course not. Opera house management is smart enough to take these things away from them before they enter the auditorium. It knows better than to arm them with anything more lethal than a rolled up program.

Football management is apparently more easily intimidated. There was some unattractive waffling going on over whether the beer bottles were a symbolic representation of the deep emotional attachment that the throwers have, not only to their own team, but to the rules of the game and to the concept of fairness itself. Or whether they represented beer bottles being thrown at people on the field, as in hey -- don't you realize that could hurt someone?

It took awhile before it was acknowledged that, yes, the throwers realized that. That was why they threw them.

What none of them, fans or management, apparently realizes is that while some venues and occasions appear to allow a great deal of leeway in tolerating manners that would be unacceptable elsewhere -- which naturally serves as a tremendous attraction -- there can be no such thing as a totally etiquette-free zone.

Football has its strict rules, as do all sports, or they wouldn't be recognizable as sports. Music has its rules, sometimes more apparent in the audience than in the performance; anyone who has had the nerve to cough soon discovers that. Even warfare has its rules, deeming certain tactics, weapons and forms of carnage to be beyond its limits.

These do not exist for their own sake, but to allow the activity to continue -- as sports could not if the players freely bashed one another or the fans littered the field, and performances could not if they could not be heard. That the lack of rules might put an end to warfare is not exactly threatening, Miss Manners acknowledges, although it is in the case of bans on nuclear weapons.

The difficulty, naturally, is in enforcement. Policing can do only so much, especially in large, volatile crowds. It is also necessary for the participants themselves to accept the fact that manners can operate at different levels for different occasions, rather than their being either on or off. There is no off button.

How does one do that?

Historically and presently, music manners have been forcibly taught to audiences by highly respected, even venerated, musicians who made clear their contempt for out-of-bounds behavior and refused to play for badly behaved audiences.

It's called using role models. Does the sports world, populated by nothing but role models, think the only people theirs can impress are little kids?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is a practical and "proper" way for a doctor to respond when a patient, or in my case, a parent of a patient, initiates a cell phone call, responds to a ring, or continues a cell phone conversation while I'm in the exam room? I'm sure neither physical violence nor a lecture on manners is in order.

GENTLE READER: The last Miss Manners checked, the Hippocratic Oath precluded doctors' using violence to teach their patients manners.

So, for that matter, does the Etiquatic oath.

What you can do is stop the examination and use the time to take or return your own telephone calls, something Miss Manners trusts you would never do while seeing a polite patient. If you are challenged, you should reply that you are waiting until the patient or parent was free to pay attention to the examination.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: So far, the only point of contention for my daughter's wedding is the seating arrangement for the dinner reception. Instead of sitting with her attendants at the parents' table, she insists on a "sweetheart table," one where just the bride and groom sit.

I've been at a few weddings where this was done. Frankly the bride and groom looked silly sitting by themselves. However, my daughter thinks this is "romantic."

Speaking of trends, almost every bride these days, even at high noon, wears a strapless gown. My daughter is getting married in the evening, but she wanted something with sleeves. She found something, but not without difficulty.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is constantly amazed at the amount of creative effort people put into weddings. She wishes they would stop.

Isolation and straplessness are both bad ideas. Ignoring the guests the couple invited to their wedding to be alone together is rude. Dressing for the ceremony as if it were a ball (as opposed to wearing a modest wedding dress and shedding the sleeved part for the party) is frivolous. A wedding is romantic, not to say sexy, by definition, and crude attempts to emphasize this have the effect of detracting from it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Of all the gewgaws invented in our modern language that people readily take into their daily usage, I don't think any competes with the words many use to conclude a phone conversation: "I'll have to let you go now."

Invariably, this is said by the person instigating the call, so the person called has the option of various interpretations, i.e.:

1. "I'm sick and tired of listening to you so hang up!"

2. "I've spent quite enough money on this phone call, so shut up!"

3. "Stop talking for heaven's sake, and let me do something worthwhile."

Almost any words to end a phone conversation would be more palatable. "There's someone at the door," "My timer just went off on the oven," or "I have to let my dog out" would all be kinder. Anything you can say to get this phrase erased from phone lines would improve the air. "I'm gonna let you go now" is just like a slap in the face.

GENTLE READER: Could Miss Manners persuade you to go back to picking on the misuse of "hopefully"? Or "loan" used as a verb instead of "lend"?

It so happens that she finds "I'll let you go now" to be a rare example of a new conventional phrase -- a fresh clichC if you will -- that serves a hitherto neglected polite purpose.

What she hears in it are not the insults you suggest, but an acknowledgment that one has chattered long enough at someone whose time is important.

This is in contrast to the I Think I Hear My Mother Calling Me sort of excuse you recommend, in which the emphasis is on one's own commitments. Besides, those may bring on an even more dreaded phrase: "Then I'll call you back later."

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