DEAR MISS MANNERS: The wedding invitations of a relative of mine who has requested my assistance are in the process of being created but are being held up because of the desire to accommodate all parties concerned.

The bride's mother is divorced and remarried. Both the mother and father of the bride, whose relationship is, at best, tense, are participating in the wedding, both financially and physically. Traditional wedding invitation formats recommend that the bride's mother's name appear first and, of course, as spelled out using her new husband's name (Mrs. Timothy Trover), which is not setting well with the ex-husband or the bride, mostly because of the placement of the name but also because it acknowledges the remarriage.

Are there any recommendations that you can give?

GENTLE READER: That no one, but especially not those preparing to enter marriage, should take up the hobby of deciding whether or not to acknowledge other people's legal marriages, however distasteful they may find them. It sets a bad precedent.

Courtesy does require that the lady's name appear first and cannot help what that lady's name happens to be.

No, wait. The bride, or whoever is on best terms with the mother, can attempt to persuade her to use the modern formal construction, "Ms. Tabitha Trover." Miss Manners only suggests that the reason for this proposal not be mentioned.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a successful professional, married, and the mother of two young adults, and I am constantly accosted in public as I go about my business.

As I use a motorized wheelchair, some people seem to feel free to make rather personal comments whenever they wish. I am not sure how to respond to comments ranging from the vacuous ("Bless your heart") to the jocular ("No speeding, now, you'll get a ticket!") to the downright rude, which I do not intend to repeat. On occasion, someone makes so bold as to touch me!

I generally try to ignore these morons, but I find it trying at times. I don't want to descend to their level, but I want to find a way to let them know they have offended me. I will confess reluctantly that when touched by a stranger, I have told them to stop in a loud, clear voice. Was I wrong?

My family is very aware of my feelings on this subject. When an airline employee approached my husband and said, "We want to load her on first," my husband got up and walked away, and I said, "Why don't you try speaking directly to me?"

I got an immediate apology. I may have been rude, but it certainly felt good!

GENTLE READER: You seem to be afflicted with the common delusion that being rude makes people feel good. Miss Manners assures you that being rude makes people feel terrible -- either because their consciences bother them, or, more commonly nowadays, because rude people they provoke retaliate in kind -- or worse.

The reason you felt good is that you made a perfectly reasonable request in an apparently civil fashion. Sounding an alarm to ward off any physical overtures from strangers is also permissible.

Miss Manners regrets that a hearty "mind your own business" is not permissible, because there are so many people who apparently need to be told. Simply continuing to go about your business without acknowledging those who make jokes or confer blessings is the dignified way to deal with impertinent strangers.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: In the old days, when colleagues and their wives would get together at parties, the "men" would talk business, and the "wives" would talk house and children. Nowadays, the "wives" are often professionals in their own right, and things can get sticky.

I am a female professor in a medical school department. When we have social gatherings, the "men" talk work and the "wives" talk, not so much house and children, but let's say "not-work."

If I stay with the "men" do I snub the "wives"? If I stay with the "wives," I'm missing some important conversation with my peers in the department.

I realize that the answer lies in mixed gender conversation, but the situation usually deteriorates into the situation outlined above. I wish to snub nobody, but I can't be in two places at once!

GENTLE READER: Have you been spending too much time in the Gender Studies department? Your use of quotation marks prompted Miss Manners to speculate that the wives weren't really wives and the men weren't really men -- and now you want to be two genders at once.

Miss Manners has heard that it has been done, but it seems unnecessarily complicated in this situation.

Even in the old days, when ladies and gentlemen (and maybe those are the terms that deserve warning quotation marks) separated after dinner by custom, rather than by inclination, the idea was only to quarantine the business talk and the cigar smoking so these questionable activities wouldn't spoil the entire party. Your implication that more important things were being said over the cigars alerts Miss Manners of your innocence of social history, as well as of your assumption that trade talk is more important than real conversation.

In any case, the artificiality of dividing all this by gender became apparent because ladies were smoking in the powder room and holding positions that made an increasing number of them have to be included in working dinners that had borne the curious label of "stag."

Miss Manners suggests that you not mess with our newfound liberty by making a point of noticing which gender is talking about what. Just join whichever conversation interests you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My son sent me a very nice wristwatch for my birthday, one which I would not buy for myself, or wear, because it is too heavy and glitzy. I have a couple of good everyday watches, plus a Rolex which I wear occasionally.

Obviously, the gracious thing to do would be to thank my son and just leave it at that, but I'm a little annoyed that he would spend good money for a speculative gift in light of the fact that we have contributed to his financial health in the past, and I'm certain we will again in the future.

GENTLE READER: However, Miss Manners doubts that you will have to worry in the future about how to treat presents your son gives you. By linking the present with your own contributions, you use your own generosity to squelch his.

Presents should be accepted graciously, even if they are misguided. If your son lives above his means and expects you to bail him out, surely you can find other examples with which to upbraid him.

:

A certain amount of childish behavior is to be expected at parties given in celebration of the birthdays of minors. However, Miss Manners would just as soon hope that it not come from the parents.

Some of them she would not trust, even blindfolded, to play pin the tail on the donkey. They are already far too eager and inventive about skewering one another.

Of course, she understands that everything parents do is motivated entirely by the desire to please their children. Can it be their fault that it makes their children happy for them to vie at out-classing other parents, to make a point of excluding certain children, and to encourage forms that foster social irresponsibility?

Only partly, Miss Manners acknowledges.

Children do appear to be born with some scary social inclinations. It is a parental obligation to disabuse them of the idea that they can get away with this.

The chief excuse for the birthday party, one of the most hazardous social forms in existence, is as a laboratory for teaching counterintuitive, and therefore civilized, behavior.

The young host or hostess has the difficult job of pretending that the guests were invited for their company as much as for the packages under their arms, and that they are there to have a good time, rather than to form an audience for whom the birthday child can be the center of attention. All of this being against every natural human inclination, it takes a lot of training.

But there are parents who seem to be training their children, instead, in acquisitiveness and self-centeredness. The forms that have burgeoned put an increasing emphasis on presents, including not just the present-opening ritual, but posting wish lists, and on glorifying and indulging the birthday child, regardless of the effect on guests. A particularly nasty innovation, for example, is to award the host prizes in any competitive games, regardless of performance.

Whatever this training is supposed to prepare them to become, it could not be decent, hospitable, considerate people. Maybe it is to become medieval lords, whose relationships with others consist of extracting tributes and exercising privileges.

In their own future interests, and that of the society on which these people will be unleashed, Miss Manners recommends parents' reining things in. Children being traditionalists, it would be wise for parents in the same neighborhood and school circles to set some limits.

Well-meaning ones have already made some moves toward doing this in regard to the guest list, for example, decreeing that everyone in a child's class be invited. (The less altruistic form, of demanding that all one's own children be invited regardless of acquaintanceship, is a bad one; a Gentle Reader whose parents demanded that said that the result was that the entire family was dropped socially.) Another method is reverting to the old rule of inviting only the number of guests equal to the child's age, thus limiting it to so few that being left out is no distinction.

Care should be taken that parties do not get big enough or expensive enough to put an undue burden on the hosts (and frighten the children). One solution is joint parties for children born in the same month, but then, care has to be taken not to put a burden on guests in supplying multiple presents when they might not be acquainted with all the honorees. An agreement on low-key parties and a low ceiling on present expenditures would help.

If parents replace competition with cooperation, they may find they can also make rules for their own convenience in regard to transportation, for example. If anyone is entitled to have a special day, they are the ones who earn it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We had arranged to meet some colleagues for lunch one afternoon during the workweek. While we only had one hour to eat, we waited 15 minutes for one of them to show up. How long should we have waited before ordering without them?

GENTLE READER: Fifteen minutes is the traditional time designated to wait for tardy guests to a formal dinner party.

And if one expects such an event to last for three to three and a half hours, figure the percentage of the time that a 15-minute wait would be, and allow that percentage for an hour's meal. (Miss Manners is not doing the math here, because she figures you would appreciate the opportunity to practice.)

In both cases, what makes chomping down polite is greeting the latecomer with, "We knew you would want us to go ahead without waiting for you, so we did."

: