DEAR MISS MANNERS: Do I or do I not? There are many of the garnishes that I really enjoy. Is it considered appropriate to eat them? Please enlighten me.

GENTLE READER: Whether you do or do not is hardly something Miss Manners would consider to be her business. Garnishes, however, are. You may eat them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When is a gift not a gift?

I am caring for a disabled member of my large family. All my requests for help have been turned down in a very roundabout way.

For example, one sibling asks how he can help for the first time in a year. There is an event at my alma mater where tickets are hard to come by. My spouse has one ticket. "I could enjoy a night out with him," I say. "I understand you have an extra ticket." He is horrified: Do I know what I am asking? "Of course I know," I say, admittedly acidly. "It's my alma mater" ("not yours" is unsaid). He cannot part with it: There is someone else he'd rather go with.

He does send me tickets to an event I have no interest in that I cannot attend. I have not acknowledged this "gift."

Another sibling also fawningly asks how he can help. "You've been inviting guests to visit us without our permission. It is our intention to control the schedule of guests in our house."

He is horrified. Aren't the visitors a 'pick-me-up' for us?

"No," I assure him. Convinced this is his way of helping, he does it again.

The next time he issues an invitation to someone to our home, we withdraw it, telling the guest the timing is bad. Now they are all horrified, hurt, angry, and complaining about our "withdrawal" and how it affects us and deprives our handicapped houseguest, apparently to many sympathetic friends and family.

These acts of kindness, or gifts, do not fall under any category of well wishes I am familiar with. This is not just a poorly chosen gift that deserves a thank-you regardless; this is a "gift" in direct contradiction to our wishes.

What do we owe a giver who ignores our requests and complains about our choices? Is a written thank you in order, or will a cold oral one do? (I can't lift one eyebrow.) Could I be exempt from a thank you at least to the sibling that I sent a shower gift to, which merited only a single group e-mail thanks to all shower guests?

GENTLE READER: Your question is not about thanking people for presents, Miss Manners is obliged to point out.

It is about informing your siblings that it galls you when they not only avoid helping you take care of the disabled family member but try to get credit with you for doing so anyway.

She hesitates to suggest that you have this out with them frankly, because your last attempt at directness ended so badly. But being snippy about everything, regardless of whether it is relevant, is not going to help, either.

For example, your brother does not owe you tickets he wants to use, and if he sends you tickets you cannot use, you should thank him. Although returning presents is ordinarily insulting, tickets have a time limit, so they may be sent back so that someone else can use them.

The family does, however, owe you obedience to your house rules. It is unfortunate that innocent people were caught in your demonstration of this, but now they know.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: We were finishing a late lunch in a casual restaurant when an arriving couple chose a nearby table. As the woman of the pair (a diminutive sort) was clambering up onto the tall barstool-style chair that was offered, her loose-fitting khaki shorts slipped severely when she scooted onto the seat.

With her back to us, the resulting view plainly suggested the lyrics to "Shine On Harvest Moon," an effect only heightened by the fact that this diminutive woman was wearing an equally diminutive string-style thong.

In the days of more modest fashion, a gentleman's discreet, "Pardon, your slip is showing" was considered an appropriate hint that a lady's garment was amiss. In this circumstance, however, we were at a loss for any polite way to indicate to this obviously oblivious woman that she was suffering from extreme southern exposure.

Since the restaurant was otherwise empty, and not wanting to embarrass her further (a near impossibility in this instance, ironically), we chose discretion and left with the hope she would quietly discover and correct the situation herself.

But what would be the proper thing to do, in this instance, from across a crowded room? Would our waiter have been an appropriate intermediary?

GENTLE READER: Your waitress might have been, but then she would only put the same question to Miss Manners about what she should say, and you already have the answer.

"Pardon, your slip is showing" is still exactly the right thing to say, as you will realize if you try updating the remark to fit the actual situation. And by the way, Miss Manners congratulates you on not hanging around.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: With all the recent troubles in the economy, I have a number of friends who are unemployed, some for a great deal of time. I also have friends who are still very successfully employed, even supervising large numbers of people and in a position to influence hiring.

I am often being asked by friends seeking employment to mention this fact to friends who might be in a position to hire.

I'm always happy to help, but I get a very funny feeling about going to have lunch with a friend and then listing a few people who've asked me to mention they're looking for work. On the other hand, I'm told that this is basic networking, and it's perfectly acceptable to do on a friend's behalf. So, I'm not sure which way to dodge. Am I being foolish to worry about this? What's the best way to be helpful to my friends?

GENTLE READER: Second-hand networking is actually a great deal more tactful than the first-hand kind, where the candidate and the target are both bound to be embarrassed if it turns out not to be a good match.

All you need do is to alert your hiring friends that you know some good people in case they are looking, and let them take it up or drop it. Miss Manners only cautions you not to mislead either side -- the prospective employer by claiming merits for which you cannot vouch, or the prospective employees by predicting success for which you cannot vouch. Although this is really a matter of ethics, it would create etiquette problems.

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A social nightmare:

You have wronged a friend, perhaps inadvertently, but apparently unforgivably. Apologies were proffered, and may even have been accepted, but things are not the same.

It becomes difficult to reach your friend and impossible to secure a time when he or she is not too busy to see you. Further attempts at explaining are rejected as unnecessary, closing off any chance at obtaining forgiveness, which is not forthcoming.

Compounding the sadness of losing a friend is the misery of knowing that you brought the rift upon yourself. Loneliness and guilt -- those unbeatable modern afflictions, all in one package.

Miss Manners is not without mercy and often pleads on behalf of transgressors. Etiquette doesn't overlook social wrongdoing, but it has a lot of forgiveness built into it -- if for no other reason, to put mercy in the bank in case one might need it oneself.

Yet, here is a worse version of that nightmare:

The avoidance and coldness is identical, but you cannot imagine what you did to deserve it. There must have been something, because a friendship that gave all signs of being mutually satisfying suddenly ceased with no explanation.

So now we have freeform guilt -- the kind that doesn't dwell on one awful incident, but chases around mercilessly through one's past looking for that hidden cause.

Only it may be a bum rap. The transgression could actually have been committed by the person who pre-empted the victim's opportunity to be offended (or, as Miss Manners would prefer to think of it, that person's opportunity to be graciously forgiving) by also doing the cutting.

Miss Manners is not charmed by this implication of self-effacement and remorse. What they are delineating is a plan to neglect the second social duty, namely that of apologizing for omitting the first one.

"But it's too late now," they wail at her.

This is a generally popular excuse. Procrastinators figure if they wait it out, whatever duty they were supposed to perform will be wiped off the record.

But in this particular type of situation, the guilty party figures he has settled the record by administering his own punishment. He has sentenced himself to banishment.

That, too, fails to engage Miss Manners' sympathies. When it is too late for a simple apology, what is required is some full-scale groveling. Far from disappearing, the requirement has accrued additional penalties for being late.

Especially among friends, a good groveler can break down the grovelee in no time. As with consumer complaints, one person carries on about how dreadful this was, and the other person is forced to argue that it's not all that important; the person who goes first gets to choose which role he plays, and the other one has to take the part that is left.

Silence, in contrast, transfers the blame, by default. That is a third social crime, right there.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My granddaughter, whose parents are divorced, is getting married. Her father is a disabled person because of illness.

The mother showed my granddaughter a book stating that if the father has no money to give, he is not entitled to come to the wedding.

We have never heard of this. I have spoken to many people who claim this is the first time they have heard this. Naturally, we are quite upset. Would you please be kind enough to let me know the protocol involved in a situation such as we have?

GENTLE READER: You never heard that fathers have to buy their way into their daughters' weddings, and that pleading illness and poverty is not acceptable?

Miss Manners is afraid that you have been checking for this information in the wrong place. What the bride's mother saw was not an etiquette book. Extortion is not a subdivision of manners.

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