DEAR MISS MANNERS: I received an e-mail from an acquaintance who is recently married and intentionally pregnant, asking if I might like "to be the coordinator of some support for us once the little one emerges. It would involve checking in with us on a regular basis about what kind of support we could use, and then a fair amount of e-mailing and phone calling (probably a few phone calls and/or e-mails a day) and making some sort of calendar to keep track of what, who and when. Needless to say, it would be a fantastic gift."

The over 50 friends and family members who also got this email were told, "If you don't want to organize but are interested in being on the help contact list, some suggestions we have been given for ways to be supportive are: meal drop off every other day or so, grocery shopping, helping clean or organize around the house (dishes, laundry, etc.). We are looking forward to sharing this immense transition with all of you."

Is their request appropriate? Worth noting is that both sets of the couple's parent are financially very well off and live within 10 miles of them. It seems that they are asking their friends to take on the job of volunteer nanny.

Several of my own friends and family read the e-mail and threatened to write you personally if I didn't. Some were even tempted to scold the couple directly. Any words of wisdom you care to impart?

GENTLE READER: Words would fail Miss Manners, had she not long been prepared by observing -- and trying valiantly to stem -- the rapid growth of shamelessness.

Weddings and childbirth are now commonly associated with demands for goods and services. Rather than risk depending on the good will of their relatives and friends, the principals demand to be given showers and parties, issue orders for tasks, and use registries to choose their own presents or frankly request cash. Enlisting others to become their servants, cleaning house, supplying meals and rounding up still more free help is only the obvious next step.

As with your acquaintance, they assume it will be taken as an honor to share -- share the costs and the work, that is, while they revel in the glory.

Why anyone goes along with this is beyond Miss Manners' understanding. No, you cannot scold such people, much as they deserve it. But you can ignore them, as you would any other outrageous solicitation, and if everyone did perhaps this abominable attitude would be supressed.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What are the appropriate steps to take when one accidentally accepts two invitations for the ?same day? It doesn't happen often, maybe once every couple years, but I recently accepted ?an invite to a dinner party only to remember a couple days later that I'd already promised to ?attend another event.

GENTLE READER: And you want to go to the second one, don't you? Miss Manners thinks that because you aren't already on the telephone to the second host, apologizing profusely for not having checked your calendar, sobbing about how you hate to miss it, and so on.

No, you can't do that to the first host, because he asked you first. Besides, more time has passed since you accepted that invitation than the second one, so it wouldn't be plausible. You must stick with the first host and grovel your apologies to the second one.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have frequently taken secret delight in eating asparagus with my fingers, which I know from your etiquette advice is correct. My husband and I were discussing this practice at the dinner table this evening, as we gently corrected our young offspring in their continuing efforts to pick up errant peas with their fingers.

This is something of a "tree falls in the forest" question: The asparagus rule is, in my experience, not very well known (although perhaps that says something about the company I keep). If one is attending a dinner party at which a lovely dish of lightly steamed asparagus is served, and one proceeds to convey one's stalks to one's mouth via fingers; if the other dinner guests are unaware of the asparagus rule and are shocked and offended, has a breach of etiquette been perpetrated?

Of course, polite people would not point out their dismay, and a polite person would not try to correct the offendees' erroneous assumption of wrongdoing. However, one can tell by the quietly shocked expressions, quickly masked, that one has offended.

In other words, if they don't know it's really OK, and they think you're a slob, have you committed an etiquette faux pas? If you suspect it might look pretty snooty to eat with your fingers and then quote Miss Manners as your authority, should you just quietly cut the asparagus with your knife and fork, as the hostess is doing? Is it correct to eat asparagus with knife and fork if you prefer?

GENTLE READER: Well, yes, it is also correct to eat asparagus without causing a sensation. But when you consider how few ways perfectly polite people have of causing a sensation, surely you will not begrudge Miss Manners this one.

It is true that on rare occasions, the super-polite may refrain from doing something correct to avoid embarrassing others. Stories about drinking the finger bowl water -- to prevent a misguided guest who has done so from the humiliation of knowing his error -- are attached to practically every halfway-humane monarch in history.

But that is not the same as running the risk of being thought incorrect when one is not. Miss Manners imagines that anyone so rude as to go around reporting this supposed error will eventually get his comeuppance from someone who knows the rule.

Nor is it a case of the tree in the forest. The true application of that to etiquette is that errors committed in total privacy do not count. Miss Manners does not advise telling this to your children.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have two very good friends who are married to each other. The wife has a doctorate; the husband does not. When I see them, I usually hug the doctor first, and then her husband. When I leave, I say bye to them in the same order: doctor, then husband. I know the doctor a little better than her husband, but is this the correct order of things? Just wondering.

GENTLE READER: You have left Miss Manners wondering what the lady's being A Doctor has to do with this. Surely you don't think hugs are ranked by academic achievement. Perhaps you just like saying it about your friend. In any case, she is the one to greet first, because she is the lady.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My cell phone is my only phone line, and I have taken to treating it as I would a landline. That is, when I am not at home, I regularly turn it off or choose not to answer it.

This past weekend, my fiance's parents were in town, and I spent Saturday and Sunday showing them around our city. I noticed that a friend phoned several times, but since there was no emergency (her voice message said she was just calling "to chat"), I did not pick up. I thought doing so would be rude to my future in-laws. I was planning to return her call tonight.

Today I received an angry e-mail from my friend. She knows that I carry my cell phone at all times, and thus did not think there could have been any justifiable reason why I would not pick up her call. When I explained the in-law situation, she said I could have simply stepped away from the group for a moment to answer the phone and set up another time to talk.

This seems ridiculous to me. If it were 10 years ago and I had no cell phone, I wouldn't have even known my friend was phoning, much less been forced to speak to her right away. Are there new rules with cell phones? This isn't the first time a friend has gotten angry for not being able to get in immediate contact and I'm starting to feel guilty. What can I say the next time it happens?

GENTLE READER: Do you remember the early days of the landline answering machine? It seems laughable now, but huge numbers of people had worked themselves up into believing that it was the height of rudeness to own such an instrument of the devil. How dare anyone not live at the beck and call of whoever wanted to summon him?

Soon everybody had them. It turns out that no one wants to live that way -- although everyone wants to find other people instantly available.

As Miss Manners recalls, we had a few moments of peace there before the cellular telephone came along to create the same hostility and the same expectations.

You friends will get over it. They can leave voice messages, text messages and send photographs of themselves with pleading faces, but they should not persuade you that it is ruder to ignore them than to ignore the people who are actually there in front of you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I are invited to a 50th birthday party of a casual friend. The invitation asks that we spend at least a minute on a microphone and tell him what we like about him, and to shower him with kind words. We are very offended by this request; what do you suggest?

GENTLE READER: That you duck when you see the microphone coming your way, or you merely say that you want to congratulate the guest of honor and wish him the best.

Miss Manners would have thought that obviously coerced flattery would be embarrassing to him. In any case, you are not obliged to fill the assigned allotment of airtime.

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