DEAR MISS MANNERS: I learned recently that I have a very mild and entirely treatable form of cancer. This disease doesn't interfere with my everyday life, other than requiring a few hours out of the office to make a small number of trips to the doctor's office. My family and close friends have provided the kind of support that I find useful, which is to go about their normal lives.

A number of acquaintances, however, have taken this opportunity to project all of their cancer- and death-related fears onto me, and I have unexpectedly found myself in the position of having to console sobbing co-workers and hysterical neighbors. As my incredulous Italian mother-in-law put it, "You get sick, so THEY should cry?"

After the third or fourth such scene, I quit telling people anything beyond, "My doctor says it's really nothing important; she wants me to try some drug, and it should all be fine." The rude handful who have insisted upon more information have been told lies: I don't remember the name of the drug, and I can't pronounce the name of the condition.

I have also sworn several friends to secrecy after explaining my problem with this overwrought sort of sympathy (do you think it is really supposed to be sympathy)? I don't want to be surprised by any more of these scenes.

Even if there was some chance of my condition getting worse (and there isn't), could any person actually believe that making a scene could somehow console a sick or even dying person? Is it perhaps an attempt to get my mind off of a relatively minor medical problem by helping me fixate on uncharitable thoughts about the person making the scene?

GENTLE READER: Of course these people are trying to get your mind off yourself. They want the focus to be on themselves. Furthermore, they do not share your dignified aversion to collecting pity.

This makes the sympathy of those with no empathy a trial. Miss Manners advises your cutting this off at the first sign by saying, "Oh, please don't worry about me. You obviously have worse problems."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have conducted a survey of friends and co-workers about this question and received startlingly different answers. Can you give us the final rule on this question? Is it considered poor etiquette to order the same dish in a fine dining establishment as someone else in your party?

GENTLE READER: No, it's not poor etiquette, but watch out for the ones who voted that it was. Their forks are going to be in your plates.

There are occasions, when several people go out together -- to a Chinese restaurant, for example -- with the idea that they will order platters in which everyone shares. But there are also people who regard anyone's food as community property and those who, oddly enough, want to eat what they ordered because they ordered what they like.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it rude to say to someone, "Did you intend to (name of the activity involved)?" For example, "Did you intend to step on my foot?" The word in question here is "intend."

I'd really appreciate your input. It will help us with our efforts to create a household of respect.

GENTLE READER: You are almost there. All Miss Manners asks is that you give one another the benefit of the doubt (while retaining the pressure to apologize) by phrasing it as, "I'm sure you did not intend to step on my foot," stressing "sure" as strongly as "intend."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a front-desk clerk at a small hotel which, luckily, in these difficult economic times, has a full roster of frequent guests.

If I had a nickel for every time one of them made a comment on the order of, "So, are you included in the price of the room?" I would have a boatload of nickels. I can handle the ones who are joking, but it's the ones who brag about their lovely wife and beautiful children and then start leering at me who make me want to tell them where to go, which a Gentle Reader should not do. What do you suggest?

GENTLE READER: You may be surprised to hear (from Miss Manners, at any rate) that this is a rare situation in which you can tell such people where to go. The polite way would be to say stiffly, "You might want to look elsewhere, sir. This is a respectable hotel, not the kind of accommodation you are seeking."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am at a loss. I have tried to teach my son to respect and give courtesy to his teachers. Unfortunately, he has repeatedly refused to do the work assigned to him.

He has the ability to make his teachers feel that they are just asking way too much of him, and that he's the sweetest kid in the world and would never not do the work on purpose. That is, until they insist that he do the work or hand it in.

How do you respectfully get the point across that schoolwork is important? I promise that he is capable of doing the work. I was his sole teacher before he went to school and I still teach him when and where I can.

When his teachers finally get around to telling me that he's been misbehaving, he's about 3 to 4 weeks behind in school. They always report to me that the work he does turn in is A or B work, and when they allow for the work to be made up I can get him caught up over a one-week period.

GENTLE READER: Apparently, the people who need to learn that schoolwork is important are your son's teachers. Miss Manners is appalled that they are teaching him, instead, that wheedling can replace working. As long as this technique is successful, he has no incentive to learn anything else.

This is such an enormous disservice to your son that you are going to have to battle it through the school system. If the teachers refuse to listen to you, you should take it to their superiors, continuing until someone understands.

What is particularly sad here is that the situation nowadays is so often the reverse -- teachers who are trying to do their jobs, and parents who only want to make their children's immediate lives easier with no thought for the future. That is what teachers mean when they complain that they are not shown respect -- the very thing you are insisting your son display. Only instead of a parent undercutting the teacher's authority, this is a case of teachers undercutting the parent at the expense of the child.

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