DEAR MISS MANNERS: Older carving sets have a folding clip on the fork, attached just below the handle. I am in my second decade of asking people what it's for. I hear all sorts of really silly guesses, some offered in a positive tone:

"Oh, that's to rest the fork on so it doesn't soil the tablecloth."

"Show me."

"This way ... (fork falls over) ... no, like this ... (fork falls over) ... OK, I guess it's for something else."

I have never heard a workable nor even plausible explanation. Do you know? Will you tell us?

GENTLE READER: If you insist, although Miss Manners hates to quash the hilarious routine that you describe. It is to prevent the fork from sinking too deeply into over-cooked meat.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband is employed by a local professional sports franchise and, as part of his salary compensation, receives three tickets to each home game. When our immediate family will not be attending a game, we usually offer them to close friends or donate them to charity events.

Upon learning of my husband's profession, I am often asked, both by people I know fairly well and by some I have just met, to supply them with free tickets. There are varying degrees of rudeness in these requests. Some acquaintances say things such as "I'd like you to take me to a game sometime," and then there are those that have actually said, "I want some tickets," or "I want to meet the players."

My response so far has been to ignore the comment and change the subject. Many of the people who make these statements are neighbors and parents from my daughter's school. I would like to maintain a cordial atmosphere, but cannot come up with a better response without sounding rude myself.

GENTLE READER: While these people are indeed rude, you would be better off addressing the fact that they are also naive. If your husband worked for the national mint, would they assume that he had the perk of grabbing a few extra bills for his friends?

You can't quite say that, of course. Miss Manners advises a tone of earnest patience when you explain that your husband would have to pay for any extra tickets he obtained, the same as anyone else, and while you wish you had a sky box where you could entertain them, you have only your own family tickets. You could add that they should be sure to come and have a beer with you in the stands should you happen to be attending the same games. And in the same cheery tone, offer to alert them when the players meet the public at charitable events.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Because of my business I fly quite frequently, usually upgraded to first class. Even in first class, the food is usually mediocre and the service is almost non-existent. The reason I am writing you is because a wonderful exception to this happened last week and I didn't know what to do.

What happened was that the service was no less than amazing. The young man attending to first class was just exceptional. I felt like I could have been in one of New York's finest restaurants (except for the food part), and I thought about leaving a tip as one would do in a restaurant.

At that point I realized that I've never seen that done and thought possibly it was the wrong thing to do. I ended up not leaving a tip but I did thank him and told him what a fine job I thought he had done. Any thoughts on the tip part, or anything else I could have done? The service was really that good!

GENTLE READER: There is something as rare as good service nowadays -- customer appreciation. So while flight attendants are in a category of professionals who are never tipped, you can certainly reward them.

You had the right idea about writing a letter, but the wrong address. Instead of writing your praises to Miss Manners, you should be writing them to the airline in question and in any online venue in which customers report their usually hideous experiences.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a "modern age" dilemma that I am really baffled how to deal with. I have joined an online dating site and simply don't know how to respond to the many married men who write to me.

A simple "I'm not interested" seems a bit meek, considering they are asking me to commit adultery and thereby harm two women (me and the wife) and usually a number of children as well in the process.

What would be a dignified and yet effective way to communicate the inappropriateness of this request? Right now I generally express the wish that the wife slaps him, throws him out of the house, and takes all of his money in a divorce settlement -- which I fear may not be quite the most enlightened way to deal with this situation!

GENTLE READER: Before you go to pieces over this, allow Miss Manners to explain a fact of life:

When you put out a notice to strangers that you are available for romance, you should not be surprised to attract some who do not share your idea of acceptable romance. For that matter, your remark about adultery assumes that any such contact would involve instant intimacy, a definition of romance that more fastidious people might find unacceptable.

In any case, a lady does not respond to an indecent proposal. Doing so only suggests that she is willing to negotiate.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I wanted to throw a party for my mother-in-law's 50 birthday. We simply did not have the room in our small apartment to host the party, so I suggested to my husband that we host it at a local restaurant.

He reminded me, and I agreed, that we did not have the money to pay the bill for all the guests. We could not decide whether or not it was rude to kindly ask guests to bring a gag gift and enough money to cover their individual meal.

My husband's solution was to ask his sister if she had anything planned. She replied by saying that she was going to arrange for a couple of her mother's friends to take her out. It never happened. We tried making up for the lack of a party by bringing her a nice bottle of alcohol. Should we have gone with our original idea?

GENTLE READER: Well, no, since your original idea was to give a party you couldn't afford. But Miss Manners wonders why that calculation always seems to be followed by the notion of getting others to pay the bills for your supposed hospitality. Why wasn't your next thought, "What can we afford to do?"

Well, eventually this did occur to you, but only after other plans fell through, and in a way that fell far short of your hopes. Perhaps if you had addressed the question earlier, you could have come up with something more festive, such as taking your mother and her friends out to tea, or inviting only her very closest friends to your house.

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