DEAR MISS MANNERS: In the relatively distant past, all newcomers to the society of priests to which I belong were given etiquette instructions, one of which cautioned against using our knives to bring food to our mouths. At the time, I was aghast that such a caution was considered necessary.

Fast forward to the present and, behold, I am once again aghast, not at the instruction, which is no longer disseminated, but by the practice of my brothers in religion, a good number of whom regularly lick their knives or use them in lieu of the forks and spoons supplied at all of our place settings.

I have suggested to the cutlery enthusiasts that the practice violates old church regulations as well as perennial etiquette propriety. Getting nowhere with this direct approach, I have settled into looking askance or catching my breath at the offense. While I suspect you will not care to intrude into the internal affairs of faith-based organizations and their Friar Tuck-like dining traditions, I hope you will feel free to express your opinion as an etiquette professional.

GENTLE READER: Although perpetually feeling free to express her opinions, Miss Manners is probably not as adept at forgiveness as you -- and you can hardly expect her to forgive sins of etiquette. All the same, she imagines that if your fellow priests in the past needed basic instructions on how to eat, a newer generation, reared in a time when communal meals at home are rare and etiquette instruction even rarer, would need them even more.

Could you not put this down to ignorance -- which even etiquette treats with pity -- and work out a way to offer them some enlightenment?

That about exhausts Miss Manners' tolerance. If they know the ritual but refuse to follow it, either because they don't care whether they disgust others or because they think there is virtue in violating the conventions, they are more in need of moral enlightenment.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My best friend believes that a wedding gift needs to match the quality/cost of the wedding. She feels that if the invitation states "Reception at the Ritz," you should purchase a more expensive gift.

I believe a gift is supposed to come from the heart, and is based more on how close you are to the couple getting married. If my sister were to get married in the back yard, I would still give her the best gift I could afford. Would you please explain the proper wedding gift etiquette?

GENTLE READER: Really, this is your best friend?

Miss Manners is amazed, considering how different are your respective approaches to personal relationships -- of which presents that are exchanged are symbolic. Your idea seems to be that such ties should be governed by emotion, whereas your friend's sentiment is that to them that has should be given. You may love her anyway, but there is nothing proper about her position.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My lovely wife and I have been married for two months now. We were both virgins before we wed. I mentioned this detail to my mother a few weeks before the wedding, and since that time she has told everybody she knows. (She has since apologized.)

Therefore, we will be in the supermarket or something and someone will walk up to us and say, "Hey, I heard you two were virgins before you got married. That's great!" Then they want to chat about it, in a casual-topic sort of way. It is intrusive and mortifying. I know my mother told whoever she came into contact with, but I feel that info like that should be kept private! What do we say to these people?

GENTLE READER: "We didn't know we had a choice."

Now wait. Before you shouted "WHAT?" you paused for a minute, didn't you? That's because you were dumbfounded by Miss Manners' suggestion.

This is exactly the effect she intends. You don't want to deny the truth of their comment, but you don't want to admit it, either, because, as you have found, that leads to even more intrusive inquiry and patronizing observations. In that moment that they stand open-mouthed, trying to process the implications of that rejoinder, you should say, "I think the produce aisle is this way" and move on.

Now let's go back to the chief culprit. As preposterous as it is for anyone to make such comments, your mother's monstrous indiscretion misled them into believing that you agreed to make this public knowledge. That she apologized is a good thing, but Miss Manners cautions you to preface any other confidences with warnings not to tell.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend and I recently planned to meet for lunch. As she had been extremely busy at work, I offered to meet her on a Saturday at a location nearer to her home.

After I had waited 20 minutes on the appointed day, I left a voice message at her work (she has no home phone), wondering where she could be. I waited around 15 more minutes, then drove home. The drive and wait amounted to an hour and a half to two hours.

The following week, not having heard from her, I called her office expressing concern for her. I was directed to her extension, leaving me to assume that she was all right and at work. I left her another message wondering what could have happened and saying I hoped everything was OK.

After more than a week, I finally reached her and she informed me that she had been in an accident on the way to meet me. We had a genial conversation, and before we hung up I asked her why she hadn't called me. She answered rather curtly that she had been very busy and had a lot of things on her mind. We hung up on good terms.

I am thinking of terminating my relationship with this person, even though I have a feeling she won't even notice.

What do you think?

GENTLE READER: That she probably wouldn't, and that you probably should. But what worries Miss Manners more is that she often says that the only excuse for not showing up after accepting an appointment is being run over by a truck, and forgot to mention that the victim is supposed to apologize anyway, presuming she is conscious.

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Social problem No. 1: Children are growing up too fast. Elementary school children are routinely exposed to sex and drugs, and not just in the television shows they see and the video games they play. Ten-year-olds are dressing like world-weary tramps and thugs. The young are extremely touchy about being treated with respect. At tender ages, they start rebelling against authority.

Social problem No. 2: Adults are refusing to grow up. Middle-aged people are watching animated shows, playing games at work, collecting stuffed animals and paying high prices at restaurants for comfort food. Businessmen protest against wearing business clothes to work, and partygoers protest against wearing party clothes to parties, all with the claim that they only feel comfortable in their simple and sturdy play-clothes. They are insulted at being treated with respect. At advanced ages, they are still rebelling against taking responsibility.

It has thus become possible, Miss Manners notes, to go through one's entire life dissatisfied with one's own age and pretending to be another.

It strikes her that there might be possibilities here of arranging a swap. Children would be in charge of running things, keeping their sins private and their tastes privileged, while adults would forfeit respect but gain respite from responsibility.

Or has that already taken place?

In the manners realm, it would certainly seem so. It is a favorite complaint of adults that children don't know how to behave toward them, but it seems to Miss Manners that the little ones are learning the manners that the big ones are teaching them.

These stem from the great modern prudery, which is not about sex (as you may have noticed), but about age. Adults have taught children that it is rude to notice that they are much older than the children themselves:

"Don't call me 'sir' -- that makes me feel old."

"I'm not Mrs. Wiggleston; that's my mother-in-law. Everyone calls me Muffin."

"Why are you getting up? Do I look as if I'm too old to stand?"

"How dare you offer me a senior citizen rate?"

Adults who are busy assuring one another that they look implausibly young, taking drastic measures to sustain the illusion, and condemning aging and death as the result of improper health care and attitudes, are not going to take this sort of thing from the young. What they are teaching is that any violation of the elaborate hoax that nobody ever ages is an insult.

Having defined the teen years and 20s as the only desirable ages to be, they can hardly be surprised that children share their pretensions. As each age group ridicules or deplores the other's falsifications, an idea of how their own look might arise.

Each has its excuses, Miss Manners understands. Children can't remain in the artificial comfort of childhood when they are so blatantly exposed to the harshness of the real world. And adults who are beleaguered by the harshness of the real world naturally want to retreat to the comforting artificial one.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My daughter is having Thanksgiving dinner at her home this year. She is planning on no TV football games during dinner and, when the football game is on, the volume will be on mute. Is this correct? She also plans on having games. Help!

GENTLE READER: Your daughter wants to have live conversation at the family holiday table, and afterward she expects people to play games with one another rather than slump around separately watching strangers play games?

Has she no sense of tradition?

As your daughter is the hostess, you must go along with her outrageous wishes. You may actually find yourself feeling thankful for this sociable treat. The only help an unsympathetic Miss Manners offers you is to suggest that the dinner be scheduled after the games -- or before or after a particular game in which this crowd is most interested -- and that the other guests be warned.

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