DEAR MISS MANNERS: A "friend" of 25 years informed me over lunch in a restaurant that my husband of 39 years has been having a long-term affair with his assistant. When I politely told her that this was laughable, she really persisted, smirked, shook her head and called me naive. There is absolutely no truth to what she said.

Do friends say things like this to friends? She says she was only trying to protect me. Do you believe this, and should I believe it?

Her husband of 30 years asked for a divorce four years ago, and since then she has been very bitter. She's very lucky to have some friends who took her under their wings and made excuses for her irrational behavior, but she doesn't seem to be moving on and the friends are starting to worry about her.

GENTLE READER: That should cease if your experience was a sample of how she treats her friends.

What was she trying to protect you from? Enjoying a happy marriage? Misery may love company, but the company should not be expected to hang around for such a crude attempt to spread the misery.

Miss Manners hopes that you defended your husband with the outrage that you would expect him to show if a friend of his had accused you of being loose. She trusts that you would not care to have him merely offer a polite contradiction without displaying indignation. You may not want to challenge the offender to a duel, but you can at least say coldly, "I will not allow you to insult my husband like that" and refuse to listen any further.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my elderly mother died, my brother and only sibling was gracious enough to take care of the arrangements, as he still resided within an hour's drive. He e-mailed me the obituary to proof, luckily, as he had my mother's maiden name incorrect.

Putting aside his absentmindedness on this editing particular, I was surprised to see him list a multitude of "survivors." He included his wife, his children and grandchildren who are far too young to know even the existence of a great-grandmother. I suggested to him that our mother was survived by her two sons.

Of course there are always ancillary members to the extended family. However, it seems that a line must be drawn. Imagine the newspaper column inches taken if the deceased was the matriarch of a huge family? My brother was of the opinion that the local custom, in this Midwestern area of the United States, was to include the whole family as survivors. I disagree. What say you?

GENTLE READER: That this is no time for you to be berating your brother. So even if you were not wrong about this matter, you would be wrong.

But Miss Manners has noticed that people who cite etiquette as a means of scolding people under emotional circumstances, such as in connection with weddings and funerals, are likely to misrepresent the etiquette. There is nothing improper either about listing all of the deceased person's direct descendants, or, for that matter, about having produced a large family.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My daughter is a lesbian and she and her partner are now engaged and would like to plan a civil union ceremony. But in order to plan the reception, we need to know approximately how many guests will be attending, supplying a minimum but making sure that the maximum number of guests could be accommodated.

The problem is, most of the guests will need to drive about four hours to where the ceremony will be held. Short of calling all those that would be invited to see if they would even consider such an overnight trip, I'm not sure how to find this information. What we need to know is if they support the couple enough to go to a ceremony and would they be able to travel for a couple of days to attend. We would be covering at least a portion of the hotel costs for guests. However, there would be some expense involved.

Do you have any suggestions on how this information could be gathered without putting people in an awkward situation? We have about 18 months to plan.

GENTLE READER: Yes: Suffer like all other hosts by issuing invitations at the proper time, waiting anxiously for replies and extracting overdue answers through polite nagging. You may tell people the date now, which would enable those who want to attend to plan ahead, but realize that a binding commitment exists only when the actual invitation is accepted.

Probing people about whether they "support the couple" is a disastrous idea. You will embarrass people who just plain don't want to make the effort into thinking that they will condemned if they do not, and shake those who disapprove out of any polite silence they have mustered. There is no wedding that could survive a referendum from the prospective guests. If you could extract the thoughts of genuine well-wishers, you would find such notions floating around as, "With her looks, you would have thought she could do better" and "I suppose he is after the money" and "I give it six months."

This is why polite people do not say everything they think, and sensible people do not urge others to do so.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: At one of our favorite bistros, I encountered a puzzling situation. My meal included a pasta dish with a cream sauce and shrimp; I was surprised to find that the shrimp in my dish still had their tails attached.

How was I to consume the shrimp without eating the tails as well? I had at my disposal two dinner forks, a very large steak knife and a soup spoon. I was quite sure I needed some other utensil, but I wasn't sure what it would be, nor how I would use it once it arrived. What would have been my proper course of action?

GENTLE READER: There is nothing in that random assortment of flatware that will be of help. Neither is there anyone in the kitchen who will be, Miss Manners gathers. She recommends prodding restaurants out of this nasty habit by sending the dish back, pointing out that you are not planning to pick the shrimp up by the tails, as you would at a buffet table, and shake off the cream sauce.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend gave me a ticket to a fundraising event for a charity for which he is a board member and whose work benefits him because he suffers from the illness they seek to eradicate. While it is a worthy organization, I do not normally support it and would not otherwise have gone.

Although he had not mentioned the need to pay him for the ticket or contribute to the charity, I wrote a modest check to the organization that evening. Acknowledging that it is irrelevant to my inquiry, it was a dreadful event from an entertainment and culinary standpoint, and I left feeling somewhat as if I had done him a favor by helping to fill his table.

A few months later, I sent an email to my friend and a number of others inviting them to purchase tickets to, and share a table with me at, a fundraiser for a political organization that advocates for the rights of members of the minority to which I and my friend above belong.

I received a scathing e-mail in return, questioning my manners because I didn't invite him and his spousal equivalent to be my guests. He invoked the earlier ticket he had given me as his justification for redressing me.

I was hurt and offended. I felt the events and organizations were quite different. His event was a charity event for which contributions were tax deductible and for which he had purchased a group of tickets because of his board membership. Mine was a political event for an organization for which I am a mere contributor. He gave me one ticket and apparently expected me to buy two for him. Upon reflection, though, those facts seem irrelevant also. Does accepting a ticket to a fundraising event generate an obligation to reciprocate -- either in general or based on the facts above?

GENTLE READER: Oh, please don't make Miss Manners side with someone who berates his friends. She hates having to admit that rude people have even a small point on their side.

In this case, it is very small. He is wrong that you owed him tickets to another fundraiser, but you did owe some form of reciprocation. Because he mistook this for return hospitality, which even failed attempts deserve, Miss Manners gathers that you hadn't offered any. Then he would be right that you should have invited the couple as your guests. Right, but rude.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am wondering why people never return a phone call when they say they will. I know it can be an inconvenient time for some to talk at that time, but when they say they will call back, the time frame is way beyond when the call was even made. Some of these people will tell me they are so busy. Is there a response that I can use to tell the person that it really bothered me that it took a week for them to return the call?

GENTLE READER: "I forget what I was calling you about."

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