DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a very passionate conservationist. At home, my husband and I recycle, compost and generally try to consume as few natural resources as possible.

Unfortunately, my (retired) in-laws, who live across the country in a small town, don't recycle, saying they "can't handle it." After bringing it up a couple of times, I have shut my mouth, but am very uncomfortable when we visit them, watching them throw away aluminum cans, newspapers, etc.

I have often considered quietly setting aside any recyclable waste that I am responsible for and taking it with me when the visit is over. (Where I would dispose of it, I'm not sure.) This would help me sit right with my beliefs. However, I'm sure it would offend my in-laws.

I have also requested educational, wooden gifts for my two young sons, but they insist on getting their grandchildren heaps of giant plastic toys (which are hard to carry home in our luggage). I imagine they are trying to show their love, but I also wonder if they are trying, on some level, to piss me off.

GENTLE READER: Instead of their being thankful that you are taking the trouble to retrain them in their old age in their own house?

Miss Manners finds it disheartening when people who are passionate about a particular virtue grant themselves license to violate other virtues. The virtue you are violating, respect for the sovereignty of others even if their decisions differ from yours, is a basic one.

Mothers-in-law who try to teach their daughters-in-law to keep house are notorious. Such interference is no more charming in the other direction.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last night my husband and I went out to dinner at a buffet-style restaurant. After finishing my dinner, I got up to retrieve my dessert. I approached the ice cream dispenser at the same time as a "gentleman." However, since I had already gotten a dessert bowl, I was ready to use the ice cream dispenser first.

This older "gentleman," who did not have a bowl yet, commented to me that I was butting in, and made other comments about punishments I deserved for my rude behavior.

Would good manners dictate that I should defer to the older gentleman, or should the older gentleman defer to me because I am a lady? The gentleman appeared in good health and was probably no more than 15 years older than myself. Regardless of the situation, which takes precedence, age or gender?

GENTLE READER: What do you suppose the chances are that someone who bawls out a stranger in an effort to push him out of the way is an etiquette expert?

Miss Manners can assure you that strict protocol gives precedence at the ice cream bar to the person who gets there first with bowl in hand and has already decided on a flavor.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it rude to cash a check before sending a letter of thank you to the person who sent it?

GENTLE READER: When would you have time?

Thank you letters are due the moment a present is received, so how could you get to the bank, or even on line, before you wrote the letter?

And don't tell Miss Manners you can't find a pen. It's right there in your hand, poised to endorse the check.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have several standard flatware settings (place knife, fork, spoon and salad fork) in a pattern I like. Lately, I've been thinking I might acquire dinner knives and forks in the same pattern. Frankly, I regret not buying the larger pieces in lieu of the others to begin with.

How do I now "justify" the place pieces? As luncheon knives and forks? I'm not so much concerned with what is correct (though correctness is nice) as with the logic of it all. Those place pieces are bugging me! I'm filling out my service (cream soup spoons, shrimp forks, tea and coffee things, etc., etc.) with vintage pieces, if that makes a difference.

GENTLE READER: Would you mind terribly if Miss Manners justifies this in terms of correctness? First, she can't help herself, and second, the police have enough trouble with the incorrect use of knives as it is.

Before the late-Victorian explosion of specialized silverware, a proper place setting consisted of two sets of forks and knives, one big and one smaller. You heard right -- there were no salad forks, fish knives or other such items that could be used as social weapons against those who didn't know which was which. The smaller set was used for breakfast and luncheon, and at dinner, the fish course was eaten with two small forks and the meat course with the large knife and fork.

Miss Manners realizes that this defeats your plan to indulge in other specialized flatware, an amusement she happens to share. So she will relieve you by suggesting how you could use them as well as both sets of forks and knives together:

Serve an entree, in the proper sense that this meant before restaurants started misusing it to identify the main course. This would be something such as sweetbreads or potted pigeon served after the soup and before the main course. Your guests may look a bit peaked, but your table will look stunning.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Would you please write about what constitutes a proper engagement? A young person recently told me that an engagement should be a year at least. She was referring to a couple we both know who are in their thirties!

In my youth, I seem to recall that an engagement of that length or longer might be proper if the couple was extremely young, still in school, completing military service, or not financially independent. This couple meets none of these and is even living together already. What am I missing? Has the nature of engagement changed?

GENTLE READER: Of course it has. As in the case you cite, affianced couples are apt to be sharing living quarters already. Engagements used to be shorter because the pair felt it was more urgent to be alone together than to take time to plan an extravaganza for others to see. But if they were really short, people would assume that the couple "had to get married," an expression Miss Manners doubts anyone even understands these days.

A proper engagement is one that lasts from the mutual decision to marry until the marriage occurs. How many hours or years that may be is something she is happy to leave up to the couples in question.

: