DEAR MISS MANNERS: Thirteen months ago, I had a seizure that resulted in several skull fractures and injury to my brain. I have had many trying times and challenges during my recovery and have done well in handling those. But as I get back into my job (a chef) and my social life, a problem has flared up.

I have lost my sense of smell and taste. I don't find this to be problematic at work, as I know that I am secure and good at what I do, and when I need a taster there are plenty of volunteers to help me. It becomes a difficulty when I am invited to a friend's house for dinner or when we go to a restaurant for a meal.

My friends know of my disability and understand that I cannot tell them how wonderful a meal tasted. But when I am at a dinner party hosted by someone who doesn't know me, it becomes awkward when the meal is finished. I give compliments on the great presentation, the textures of the food, how great it was to be invited for dinner, but it always comes down to avoiding the issue of how the meal tasted.

This is something people expect to hear when they have invited a chef to dinner and people take it the wrong way when a chef avoids telling them how the food was -- good or bad. Sometimes I overhear the hostess making comments about my not commenting.

If I get into explaining my disability, it brings up questions that I really do not wish to answer, such as "How can you be a chef if you can't taste your food?" This is going to be a lifelong disability for me and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

GENTLE READER: Did you not realize what was going on in such situations before you acquired your disability?

Miss Manners has no doubt that your hosts expected and relished your comments. But not, she dares say, to hear whether you found the food good or bad. You didn't really tell friends who had invited you for dinner that you had suffered through a bad meal, did you?

Whatever compliments you offered, however guarded, they took as proof that they had earned accolades from a professional chef speaking impartially. Furthermore, Miss Manners regrets to say, they balanced this with the idea that when you spoke critically of the food at a restaurant, there might have been an element of professional jealousy.

Miss Manners' point is that you should always have been excusing yourself from pronouncing judgment on the cooking of friends. She recommends declaring happily, "I'm so happy to enjoy a delicious meal without having to analyze and evaluate it."

"Delicious" sounds like a judgment and will satisfy them at the moment. If repeated, however, it sounds like the sort of thing every polite guest would say.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the difference between "Excuse me" and "Pardon me"?

GENTLE READER: "Excuse me" is the polite way of acknowledging that you are inconveniencing someone else. "Pardon me" is the polite way of pointing out that someone else is causing you inconvenience.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last month I attended a wedding in the south of France as the guest of one of the bride's friends. (The bride and groom are acquaintances of mine.) After the travel plans were already booked and paid for, the bride advised my friend that, although I could attend all the other activities around the wedding, she would have to "uninvite" me to the reception in order to save money unless one of her "A-list" guests could not attend.

Right after the wedding ceremony at the church, the bride's father told me that her cousin and his wife could not come, and insisted that there would be a place for me. (The wedding couple was occupied with greeting guests and taking photos, and couldn't be consulted at that time.) However, at the reception two of the groom's cousins showed up with uninvited dates, so the bride asked me to leave, which I agreed to do graciously, although I was both hurt and humiliated. She even left me to my own devices to find a telephone to call a local cab company. (Fortunately, one of the guests witnessing my dilemma kindly made the call on his cell phone.)

I feel the bride was tacky, rude and ungracious, and could have asked the on-site wedding coordinator to accommodate one more guest; my friend insists that what she did was within reason and stayed at the reception. What is your take on this? By the way, the bride was more than happy to take my wedding gift.

GENTLE READER: This is the sad result of two badly thought-out innovations now common to the modern wedding.

One is the Guest Once Removed, who is not someone that the bridal couple or their families particularly want to have and may not even know. But they have ceded a slot to each of their single guests to bring their own guests.

The other is the Make Our Wedding Your Vacation plan. Rather than being married where they or their parents live, they choose a vacation spot and have as guests not necessarily those closest to them, but only those who are able and willing to spend their vacation time and money to travel there, too.

Under ordinary circumstances, Miss Manners has little patience with single people who claim they would not enjoy weddings without companionship of their own choosing. If they have no pleasure in seeing their friends married and meeting their families and other friends, why attend at all?

But if they are to devote days instead of hours to the event, it is different. Even Miss Manners does not expect them to vacation alone.

And if there are to be Guests Once Removed, gracious -- no, not just gracious, but decent -- hosts refrain from making them feel they have second-class status. Miss Manners would hardly expect a bride to leave her wedding reception to call anyone a taxi, but there would have been no necessity to do so had she behaved properly.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: There is a luncheon riding on this. I say that a lady should always follow behind the host or hostess first to a table in a restaurant. My friend says that if it is a host the lady follows first, but if it is a hostess the gentleman follows first. Please settle this for us.

GENTLE READER: You are correct; the gentleman goes ahead only if there is no host or hostess and he must lead the way. Miss Manners is afraid your friend expects ladies to pay far too much attention to the genders of restaurant personnel.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a family member who absolutely needs his morning cup of coffee the first thing in the morning after getting up. So he crawls out of bed and heads straight to the kitchen in his "tighty whities" and undershirt.

Then he holds conversation in a kitchen with a lot of windows, which other family members are embarrassed by, and concerned that fellow neighbors can see in or passers-by on the street when they are walking through our neighborhood. How can we solve this issue?

GENTLE READER: A coffee maker in the bedroom? Window shades? Everyone else in the family leading him out of the kitchen to converse?

Miss Manners suspects that what you really want from her is a way to teach your relative modesty. But she gathers from his coffee habit that he is a grown-up, and she supposes that the family has had no success arguing its own embarrassment.

For him to be embarrassed enough to go put on a robe, for goodness' sake, there has to be someone whose disapproval would embarrass him. The neighbors? The police?

It might be easier to find a nice, gauzy material that will let in the light but blur the view and nail it over the windows.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We are a fairly successful couple who both work and have a wide range of friends. For the past few years, our businesses have slowed, as has our income. And we have a 5-year-old child. All of this to say -- we aren't as wealthy as we once were and so hosting parties is out of the question.

Here's the challenge: We have friends, a married couple with no children, who are on the financial upswing, who have moved into a lovely new townhouse and, for the last few years have been hosting many parties in their home. There's the annual New Year's Day brunch, the annual Halloween Brunch, the make new acquaintances seated dinner party, the annual Fourth of July party and so on ... YIKES! We feel so far behind on reciprocating that it's becoming uncomfortable.

GENTLE READER: You should be uncomfortable. But not, Miss Manners hastens to add, in financial ruin. You do owe a return on hospitality you have accepted, but only within your means.

Shoving a bottle of wine at your hosts when you are a guest will not do it. You must entertain them. In your own way, not theirs.

Two of the most chic forms of entertainment are ridiculously cheap: tea parties (tea, bread, cucumbers, cookies) and midnight suppers (scrambled eggs, salad) after an event that people were already attending (and so bought their own tickets), such as theater or opera. Less formally, there is family supper, ordinary (as opposed to New Year's Day) brunch, and watching a game or rented movies with snacks.

People just like to go out once in a while, and they like going to other people's houses. Most of all, they like the feeling that their friends want to see them enough to make an effort, beyond showing up for food and fun whenever others make the effort.

: