DEAR MISS MANNERS: For three generations, my husband's family owned a chain of department stores. At the height of their success, there were approximately 30 stores in three states. The stores were sold to another family-owned chain of stores about 10 years ago.

Since then, in an effort to preserve some family memorabilia for my daughter, who doesn't remember this part of the family history, I have collected several promotional and advertising items with the store name and logo on them. Many of the items are from the 1940s and '50s. Rather than store them away in a closet, I would like to display them in a tasteful and meaningful way. Most of the items are small -- paper fans and calendars, for example.

I know there are ways of displaying collectibles that reflect a person's interests and hobbies, but does having one's last name on the collectibles prohibit the display of this precious memorabilia?

GENTLE READER: There is a difference between a hobby collection and personal memorabilia, and what you have is in the latter category.

If you collected, say, seashells or Rembrandts, you could display them anywhere in the house. (Miss Manners is assuming that you are not a member of the Rembrandt or mollusk family.)

However, by the strictest standards -- meaning ones that are commonly flouted -- personal memorabilia, including family photographs, belong in rooms seen only by intimates of the residents, such as a library, study, bedroom or family sitting room.

Your case offers a particularly apt illustration of why. While your good friends presumably know something of your family history, other acquaintances whom you entertain may not. If they were unaware that your family no longer owned the chain, they might assume that you were advertising the goods. Or worse, that you were giving out logo-laden souvenirs.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: All I want for my birthday is dinner out with my life partner. I do not want all kinds of e-mails and talk about it from my co-workers. I work at a Fortune 500 company that views such things as important for employee bonding. Even though I requested that my birthday not be celebrated publicly, word has gotten around and I am getting unwanted attention. Is there any way I can respond to curb this? Or do I need to just put on a good face and get through the day?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is afraid so. Much as she sympathizes with your distaste for this kindergarten practice among working adults, you cannot tell people to buzz off while they are wishing you a happy birthday. And if that were all, it wouldn't be so bad. It's the cakes and collections for presents that create a burden for those who must participate and can hardly make the guest of honor feel beloved, as he surely knows he doesn't pony up for others because he loves them.

If you can find others who also consider the idea that they will work harder if colleagues are required to pretend to be their buddies patronizing, perhaps you can kill the practice in your office.

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"Causing a scene" is an etiquette felony.

The injunction against raising a ruckus in public was once so well understood that polite people had a hard time overcoming their proper inhibitions in cases of emergency. They had to reassure themselves that it was quite all right, under the right circumstances, to yell "Fire!" or "Help!" or "Watch out, there's a piano about to fall on your head!"

No longer. If you can't get on reality television, at least you can make a public scene.

What has long driven Miss Manners even wilder than she naturally is, is that many of the louts who make unnecessary scenes claim to be acting in the name of etiquette. Often they report to her how they detected a transgression and humiliated the transgressor with a whopping transgression of their own. Then they wait for Miss Manners to applaud.

And now we are seeing Act 2. Victims of rudeness who do not retaliate in kind (meaning rudeness, not kindness) feel the shame of a duty neglected, and expect Miss Manners to coach them back into the fray.

"I was sitting at a bar, minding my own business and enjoying a refreshing boisson," writes a Gentle Reader, "when a man sat down next to me, lit a cigarette, and began to blow smoke in my face and all over the rest of me.

"My first instinct was to move to another seat at the bar, where there were no smokers. However, the etiquette of this move was unclear to me. Should I just stand up and walk to a different seat with my drink, or should I excuse myself and then move, or should I tell him that I am moving because I don't like being poisoned by strangers in public places?"

A lady who was bawled out in the grocery store for leaving her cart in the middle of the aisle while she went to find plastic bags for her vegetables ruefully admitted that she had simply fled, not knowing what to say. "She was one of those loud-mouthed types, and I should have told her off when I had the chance."

"I'm trying to teach my kid good sportsmanship, and one of the fathers at his school boos visiting teams at the soccer games," a gentleman writes. "So I'm thinking of organizing the other fathers to boo him the next time he hogs the microphone at the parents' meeting."

"It was a perfect summer day, Red Sox in town, life couldn't be better," writes another Gentle Reader. "Except that the woman directly behind us never stopped talking for nine innings. She was some sort of baseball writer and let everyone for two rows know how important and connected to the players she is and how much she knows about the game. She never drew a breath until I thought I was going to go insane. Is that just part of life in being in a public area? Is there a polite way to ask someone to please shut up, if even for just a minute? Should we have moved and told her why?"

Miss Manners regrets having to say that yes, encountering rude people is a part of life in public areas. So are brawls in bars, shouting matches in grocery stores, derisive disruptions at meetings and fights in the bleachers.

But one can walk away rather than enter the fray. Because scenes often lead to violence, those who don't fight back seem oddly to fear the charge of cowardice. But they should not fear the even more bizarre charge of having taken up the very rudeness they deplore.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was called for jury duty recently. I realized, after I had been questioned by the judge with the usual suitability for jury service questions, that I was the only one of the group that had answered "Yes/No, sir," or "Yes/No, Your Honor" to his questions. No one else questioned before or after me used any sort of honorifics with the judge or the lawyers who were doing the questioning.

I was left wondering if my use of honorifics in this situation was possibly perceived as out of place or antiquated? I also reflexively address other people in positions of authority, such as police officers, as "sir" or "ma'am." Am I being excessively formal for today's societal norms?

GENTLE READER: A courtroom is not an informal venue, as you would find out if trouble, rather than civic duty, had brought you there. Judges have far stricter means of enforcing etiquette than poor Miss Manners, who can only plead and scold.

So while a judge is unlikely to overlook the omission of the polite form you used, showing respect for his authority is a really good idea.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a college student and often, when friends' parents are in town, they will offer to take out a group of their child's friends to a restaurant.

If I cannot attend, do I express my regrets to the son or daughter who did the inviting, or to the parents themselves, who would have done the paying?

If I accept the invitation, I generally feel it is good form to send a thank-you note to the parents -- after all, they bought me dinner. A roommate insists this is pretentious, and that warmly thanking them at the end of the meal or at our next meeting is sufficient. Who is correct?

I am 21, but many of my friends are not. Some parents have offered to buy me a glass of wine at dinner (when appropriate with our setting and meal). I certainly have no intention of drinking more than one glass or getting drunk, but is it inappropriate to accept a drink given the fact that some of my friends at the table cannot?

I generally do not assume that parents will pay the way of all of their children's friends at dinner, as the outing sometimes involves six or seven of us, and I have on occasion asked how much I owe or otherwise indicated upon the arrival of the check that I would certainly be willing to pay for my meal. Someone indicated that this may be offensive and shows that I don't think a family is well-off.

Am I being rude in my effort to be polite?

GENTLE READER: Pretentious? Rude? Does Miss Manners think that parents who receive a direct answer to their invitation and a letter of thanks are thinking, "Hummph! Who does she think she is?"

Your concern, rather, is what the other students think. What your friends are protesting is your proposing to do more than the minimum that the situation requires, which is to reply to the person who gave you the invitation and thank the hosts at the meal's end. You actually recognize that these people have done something gracious, and you want to be gracious in return.

When the others call it "pretentious," it means "I don't want to do it, so don't show me up." But why should you lower your standards to meet the common ones -- anymore than you should feel obliged to lower your age and forgo a legal drink?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When someone on the street offers me a flyer for something in which I know I have no interest, is it more polite to 1) take the flyer, as this is the person's job and he or she is trying to do it diligently, and then throw it away, or 2) decline the flyer so that it goes to someone who may be interested in it?

GENTLE READER: Giving out the flyers is only the physical aspect of the job. If that were all there was to it, this could be accomplished by handing them all to one (unsuspecting) person.

The purpose of the job is to get the word out to those who might be responsive. If you know in advance that you will never be persuaded to do whatever it is the flier asks you to do -- sign a petition, buy a product, or whatever else -- and yet want to help the distributor to accomplish his or her purpose, Miss Manners recommends saying "No, thank you," and moving on.

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