"Can you say a few words about yourself?"

"A few," Miss Manners said. "Well chosen" also comes to her mind.

Going about your business and assuming that others will be aware of your essential qualities no longer seems to be an option. The most you can expect is that at your funeral, your friends will wax poetic about how much they contributed to your life. If you achieve public attention before that, half the people asked will describe you as "kinda normal, I guess" and the other half as "I dunno, kinda strange."

On numerous ordinary occasions, people are required to provide some background information about themselves. Typically, they attend meetings where people who are drawn together by work, interests or problems go around the table telling their qualifications for being there. They also find themselves at the sort of large social gathering in which the roof provides an introduction (which is etiquette's quaint phrase for encouraging guests to talk even without the host's prompting), but the roof fails to provide material for conversation.

They may receive questionnaires from their alma maters asking them what they have been doing since graduation. They meet -- or become -- a new neighbor, colleague or client and need to provide some biography to launch the relationship. They are stranded with strangers, in airports and other waiting rooms, and turn to conversation as one of the few available amusements.

True, the life story of an honest person is presumably always the same, but each such situation requires that it be edited to fit the circumstances.

Miss Manners has observed, however, that many people have developed a single set piece about themselves, which they deliver in full at each of these opportunities, and sometimes when no such opportunity exists. Furthermore, the forms used are suspiciously reminiscent of patterns intended for specific circumstances that have nothing to do with the ways in which they are used.

The daytime talk-show format is particularly popular: "Mother loved the other children best which led to my substance abuse, but now, with your help, I'm finally going to get my life together." Suitable for support group meetings, but a bad choice for first dates.

Others favor the professional resume: "I became a vice president at 25, and naturally expect compensation commensurate with my talents, but I've gotten bored and am looking for something more challenging." Should be confined to job interviews and clueing in prospective in-laws, but never trotted out at social events.

Despite its bad reputation, the Christmas letter survives as a biographical format: "Here are pictures of the children on our rafting vacation -- as you can see, they are great athletes, and they star on their school teams, but they are also tremendous students, which I suppose comes naturally because we ... " Should be reserved for people from whom an equivalent saga would be not only tolerated but welcomed.

The Academy Awards have a big influence: "I feel so humbled and grateful, and I couldn't have done it without the love and faith that my family and God and my wonderful dog have shown in me." Should be edited down for public consumption, but can be expanded for strictly family occasions.

The Miss America Pageant is also influential: "These are my ideals, and I believe that I can help make the world a better place because I can be anything I want if I have faith and work hard." Excellent for private, late-night talks with intimates and for professional ethical discussions, but should never be unleashed on strangers.

-- The protest rally format keeps gaining: "I see how things really are, and you're making the world a worse place because you don't." Fine for public discussions, but should never been unleashed on family and friends.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the appropriate response when someone knocks on the door of the bathroom or toilet stall that you are in?

GENTLE READER: "I'll be right out!"

If that is not possible, for reasons Miss Manners would prefer not to contemplate, the second choice is, "Sorry, I'll be a few minutes more."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My 23-year-old nephew, after very long consideration, decided to break his engagement to his girlfriend of seven years. The engagement was only a few months old and no date was ever set for the wedding.

Both families have been friends for years, but we live in a small town and this is all sure to result in some awkwardness. He did not fall out of love, he had an accident that resulted in about four months of convalescing and thinking about his future.

We as a family need some guidance as to how go on with things. Do we act as if nothing happened? Do we apologize to her and her family for the breakup? If she and her family break relations with the rest of us, it will be a great loss for all of us. We love her and her family and we want to do the right thing.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners gathers that your nephew cruelly jilted the young lady and broke her heart. This may not be the case, but it is the impression you give when you feel you should offer an apology. And it is not the impression you should give, even if it does happen to be the case.

All engagements are broken by mutual consent, if only because no sensible person would consent to marry someone who purposely failed to show up at the altar. Therefore, everyone, from the former couple to bystanders, is supposed to assume that it is all for the best that the unsuitability of the marriage was found out in time. You could add that your family loves her and were eager to have her as a relative, but realizing that they are young, concedes that they should take no such step until they know their hearts.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was having coffee at a restaurant with a friend, and in the middle of our conversation another woman came up and introduced herself to us and, from how she was talking and what she was saying, it became clear that the two of them were involved in a group program of psychotherapy together.

While I find nothing wrong with taking a proactive approach to mental health, I realize that there are privacy issues at hand. Just as I would not want my medical history to be broadcast indiscriminately to the world, so, too, would someone seeking the services of a mental health professional want to be in control of who is privy to that information.

After the third party left, I quickly changed the subject although, in retrospect, I felt awkward in doing so. However, since that incident, my friend has not brought up that subject to me and I, of course, have no reason to bring it up to her.

Out of this experience, I have three questions for you. First, would you have recommended a different approach for me? Admittedly, according to adage, hindsight has 20/20 vision, but I wonder how to approach this issue if I find myself in that situation again.

Second, would your recommendations carry over to general incidents where one receives unsolicited personal information?

Finally, how could I have handled the matter differently if the information had been disclosed to me out of spite? The women who disclosed this information did not appear to do so out of malice -- only carelessness. I am curious to know, however, if my response to learning that information would have been different otherwise.

GENTLE READER: Your response was impeccable. The etiquette angle is probably not the only thing you are curious about, and Miss Manners congratulates you on your restraint.

Your friend's being the inadvertent victim of an indiscretion would in no way justify your being indiscreet to her as well. Personal information should be considered under the control of the person whose information it is, even when the whole town knows. Had your friend wanted to take advantage of the opening to discuss her psychotherapy with you, she would have done so.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am in need of advice on birth announcements. My husband died a year ago October. Using embryos we previously had frozen, I became pregnant and am due with our daughter at the end of May.

Throughout my pregnancy it has been very important to me that when people learn I am pregnant that they know that my late husband is the father -- a sometimes difficult thing to explain for people unfamiliar with current infertility procedures.

I've seen wedding announcements where a deceased parent is recognized. I would like to recognize my late husband on my daughter's birth announcement. Can you recommend a way that I might do this that considers my unusual situation?

GENTLE READER: Devoted as she is to tradition, Miss Manners is reluctant to admit that there can be situations so new that precedent is useless. There have been posthumous children born throughout history, especially during wartime. (True, the time gap is new -- although she seems to recall queen consorts who claimed succession for children born rather long after the monarchs who fathered them were deceased.)

However, the more recent and relevant example you mention is a tricky one. Wedding announcements should indeed include deceased parents, but sentiment has also misled people into putting their names on wedding invitations. The effect of being invited by someone characterized as "the late" is unfortunately confusing and creepy.

A third-person announcement is difficult, but if you styled yourself "Mrs. Kevin Demott" and announced the birth of your and your late husband's daughter, it would get across the essential idea. A first-person note is a better way to announce a birth anyway, and makes it easy to mention that the baby is yours and your late husband's. In no type of birth announcement is it proper to deal with the conception, so please omit the part about the frozen embryo.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it just me, or is there a trend out there wherein young (age 20 to 40), single, professional women host their own birthday parties at fashionable restaurants and then expect the invitees to pay for her (the birthday girl's) meal?

I have two female friends who have done this recently and upon further research and reflection I realize that they have both done this in recent years past. I thought -- silly me -- that you were supposed to wait for someone to ask you out to lunch or dinner on your birthday, not the other way around.

I have never known a man to do this.

This practice of a woman asking out her friends (both male and female) with the tacit or not-so-tacit assumption that she deserves to be treated at the end of the meal strikes me and a few of my friends as a bit tacky. I am tempted to politely decline the next time I am invited to a similar birthday dinner.

GENTLE READER: There certainly has been a trend toward blatant greed, with an emphasis on planning treats for oneself and demanding that others pay for them. If you have particularly noticed it among unmarried ladies, perhaps it is because they feel cheated of the opportunity to follow this unattractive practice by demanding wedding and baby showers.

By all means decline such non-invitations. Barring a revival of modesty and reticence, which Miss Manners believes to be unfortunately unlikely, the only thing that will stop this is a polite refusal to submit.

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