DEAR MISS MANNERS: Well, I thought that I knew everything, but I am flummoxed. How does one properly eat Camembert, Brie, or other soft cheese in rind when they are served in public?

Are you supposed to cut a slice and eat it rind and all (yuck)? Or leave the rind for the next unlucky guest while sneaking off with only the lovely, gooey part?

Do you drag your cracker or bread in the soft part and risk leaving messy crumbs and broken crackers in your wake? I generally just run up to it, hack off a piece, then find a way to dump the rind when no one is watching, but this method requires too much privacy and obsessive behavior for most public events.

I am sure there is a better and more polished method of enjoying this gooey mess in public, but what is it?

GENTLE READER: Why does Miss Manners picture you at an art gallery opening, having skipped dinner, balancing a wine glass and trying to wield a plastic knife, while behind you press hordes of others trying to get at the cheese plate?

Not the best way to eat. In an ideal world, you would be served the cheese already portioned onto crackers, or as a cheese course complete with small knife, fork, plate and, most essentially, table space and chair.

Dragging the cracker is not a good idea, nor is hand-peeling away the part you don't like. The technique you need consists of inserting the knife at an angle, and cutting yourself a wedge under the rind (which is edible, but never mind).

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A distant relative and her husband recently sent a card announcing the birth of their first offspring, a baby girl. In addition to the child's given and, I assume, legal name (Elizabeth Anne), the announcement also specified a nickname -- "Betsy."

My wife thinks that announcing a nickname was cute and helpful, but I feel offended by it, and don't know why. Aren't nicknames supposed to be spontaneous appellations?

Of course, my wife and I will call the child by whatever name the parents prefer, but it all seems very artificial to me. Is it common practice nowadays for parents to designate nicknames for their children? Am I justified in thinking that it is not proper for them to do so?

GENTLE READER: You would have to supply Miss Manners with a better reason than that it seems artificial. The natural method of conferring nicknames is not something she wishes to preserve for its charm.

With the increased liberties people take with one another's names, it is common for adults to assume that they are entitled to use whatever nickname they presume should be derived from a given name. That is a step above the nicknames children give one another, most popularly those associated with some undesirable physical characteristic.

These parents are valiantly trying to head this off by telling you how they plan to address the child. Unfortunately, this will probably not prevent their friends from inquiring about Lizzie or Beth, nor the child's future playmates from calling her Fatso or Skinnybones.

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"So where are you folks from?" the bellman would inquire as he saw hotel clients to their rooms.

Presuming that a couple so queried was not from separate married households in the same town as the hotel, this was considered to be an innocuous way of opening a conversation with strangers.

Whatever they replied, he could say, "Never been there myself, but they say it's great." If the visitors were feeling chatty, they could extol the charms of their hometown, but they could also simply murmur assent and ask for extra pillows.

Since the invention of luggage on wheels, Miss Manners finds that the question lingers chiefly among college freshmen, waiters who don't have specials to recite, and passengers trapped on the tarmac in airplanes that are going nowhere.

Elsewhere, it was replaced by the more pointed question, "What do you do?" Suddenly, everyone was racing around demanding everyone else's c.v.

This caused some social consternation. Although that question may be intended merely as a conversation opener, it doesn't work very well as such. What conversation follows tends to consist of stock jokes, complaints, or requests for free help in connection with whatever work was named. Many people have concluded that it is therefore an attempt to find out whether they are important enough to talk to, and the paltry aftermath always convinces them that their questioners have concluded not.

But the next thing Miss Manners knew, a version of "Where are you from?" was back. Only this time it is not as bland as before. Geography is no longer the issue; the inquiry has to do with race and ethnicity. People who answer as carelessly as before, stating their hometowns, are further interrogated as if they are being disingenuous:

"No, where are you really from? Where are you from originally? Where were your parents from?"

This is particularly galling to homegrown Americans whose looks or names strike the descendents of other immigrants as somehow more "foreign" than their own. The presumption that there is a particular American look or nomenclature is not borne out by the census figures.

Those questions are also heartily resented by people of mixed origins, and never mind that this category should include everyone with ancestors who married outside the immediate family. Yet mixed answers are not considered satisfactory. If they do not identify solely with whatever side of the family strikes their nosy interlocutors as more exotic, the conclusion is that they must be ashamed. We have gotten to where children no longer have to be part of a divorce case to be asked to choose between mother and father.

Rude as it is, Miss Manners does not rule out the question itself because of its usefulness as a harmless conversation opener. True, even that was abused when the common reply switched from "I hear it's great" to "Lot of crime around there, I hear," but we do need an occasional break from "Lot of rain we've been having, don't you think?"

Her ruling is that it should be answered only in terms of domicile, hometown or last stop, and that no further probing is allowed. The only time it is proper to question people about their bloodlines is when you are contemplating breeding with them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have enjoyed music all my life. I like to listen to it and I like to dance to it. Because I have also wanted to enjoy symphonic music, I recently bought season tickets to our city's concert series.

Please help me out with this: Is it rude to tap one's toes at the symphony or even move in any slight way?

I'm amazed that no one seems moved to move, but I've discreetly looked around and NO ONE is moving, not so much as a toe. Is there a rule that governs this sort of thing? If so, no wonder everyone there is over 60.

GENTLE READER: Maybe, but they can move when they're provoked. Miss Manners would not advise this.

The etiquette of symphony concerts is that the only muscles that may be moved are the ones needed for turning to glare at those who dare to breathe too loudly. What is done to toe-tappers is too horrible to mention.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I have three children and live out of state from the rest of our family. My parents and two adult brothers are not especially organized and are rather busy people, and how organized and busy they are determines how little or how much they do to celebrate my kids' birthdays.

Sometimes we'll get a phone call, and/or a card, and/or a gift, and sometimes we'll get nothing. The "attention" they give varies from child to child and year to year.

The kids' birthdays are within 10 weeks of each other, so the inequities are glaring to me and I wish they would be more consistent. I will eventually get apologies and excuses like, "I forgot, I couldn't get to the post office," etc. I don't think they do this intentionally because they've always been this way (I've also received Christmas presents from them in mid-January), but do you think I should say something when, for example, my son's first birthday comes and goes and two family members do not acknowledge his birthday at all?

GENTLE READER: You might need to say something, but Miss Manners is not confident that you know whom to address, let alone what to say.

Should your children complain, you should tell them that presents are not an entitlement to be expected automatically; that they should know that their relatives love them even when they don't happen to fork something over; and, in the case of late-arriving presents, that not getting everything at once has the advantage of prolonging the occasion.

When you have thoroughly cowed them, Miss Manners would suggest confessing, "I know, they're always late, and it's driven me crazy all my life, but what are you going to do? We love them, and that's just the way they are."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it right to support an engagement to the engaged couple's face, but not really support what they are doing at all?

Recently, many of my friends have gotten engaged, and even more of them had weddings for me to attend every weekend. But I have two different sets of friends who have gotten engaged and none of our friends support the engagements.

Why are all of my friends talking of how horrible this engagement is behind their backs and supporting it to their face? Mind you, our friends who just got engaged are ages 20 and 21, and they have only known each other for four months and have already set the date for their wedding next summer.

What do I do? Do I support what makes them happy? Or do I show reservations because I think that the girl might not know everything one should know when getting engaged to a guy?

GENTLE READER: Loath as she is to support what must seem duplicitous, Miss Manners has to admit that your double-talking friends are acting within the bounds of propriety.

Only very close relatives and intimate friends are allowed to unburden themselves by asking, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" -- not that it ever does any good. Others are not required to "support" the engagement, but merely to react pleasantly, with their congratulations, to a done deed. To ask them to be constrained from talking it over frankly among themselves would be even more futile than to tell a couple in love to proceed cautiously.

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