DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a stay-at-home Dad, and my wife calls often during the day. I love her dearly, and don't mind hearing that she loves me, but that's not what happens.

She calls and I hear about her day and problems. And while I am busy with our 3-year-old, holding the phone on my shoulder, I hear her typing something on her end.

I really feel insulted and upset. Is it poor manners to keep someone on the phone while you keep working? I don't want to be rude, but it bothers me.

I finally had to hang up on her yesterday when she called and kept me on the phone while I was trying to play baseball with our son in the yard, and she wasn't constantly talking, just coming up with spurts of what came to her as she Googled something.

She does ask about my day, but sometimes it seems an excuse, especially since she knows my schedule, and calls at least twice a day. Once I asked her to only call once a day. This was after I had retired from the Army and it felt like she was checking on me.

I realized I was wrong about that. She wants to talk. It is just not easy to talk and care for a child, or play with him. She knows this intellectually. What can I do?

GENTLE READER --What a nice reversal this is of "Honey, don't call me at the office."

Well, maybe not so nice, now that Miss Manners thinks about it. It sticks you with that insulting assumption that domestic work, including child rearing, is so unimportant as to be easily interrupted. (What is really important, according to the same people, is being out in the world carrying on about the importance of our children.) And your wife clearly needs a more challenging job.

Ask her to e-mail you instead. And during the transition period, apologize that you didn't answer the telephone because you left it indoors when you were out playing baseball, can't hear it when you're running his bath water, or whatever.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: It seems to be a recent trend in restaurants to add verticality to the plate. For example, perching a trout filet on a mound of greens which have been piled on a bed of rice.

At times I find myself honestly confused about how to eat the food. Do I knock the fish off the greens then rake the greens into a pile? Am I supposed to eat the fish, greens and rice all in one bite?

I don't understand what was wrong with a simply laid plate of food. It may have been a bit boring, but at least it never left a diner baffled.

GENTLE READER: What was wrong with the simple plate of food was that it looked like a simple plate of food. Thus it did not express the artistic soul of the chef who supervised its creation.

Or something.

In any case, you may eat in whatever order you wish. The chef is not out front to see you knock over his masterpiece, and Miss Manners assures you that etiquette doesn't mind a bit.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I think this is a question about how to deal properly with concrete disagreements that seem to be acting as stand-ins for emotional issues.

The specific example has to do with salt. My sister's family visits our parents for several weeks at a time, and we go up for a few days so the cousins can see each other. My sister does not believe in using table salt, either in cooking or at the table. (Salt in condiments, snacks, canned foods, etc. is not a problem.) My parents also don't use table salt in cooking, but they keep a small amount on hand to put out when they have company. We cook without added salt, so each person can season things to their own taste at the table.

My sister used to argue ferociously with me whenever I went in search of salt for meals: I wasn't respecting my parent's wishes, I always force others to conform to my demands, etc.

There are several reasons why I think the issue isn't specifically about salt. For one, my parents don't object. For another, my sister has no problem putting salt out for her friends when she hosts them at my parents' house.

I don't know if our participation as guests makes a difference -- we purchase groceries and do the lion's share of the cooking. (Only "approved" recipes -- it's made abundantly clear when something is not acceptable, so we stick to recipes that get raves and are specifically requested.)

I try to accommodate style differences as much as possible since these visits are so short, and I realize that going without salt for few days is hardly a tragedy. However, this is the one of numerous minor issues that we found the most stressful. In desperation, one time I brought our saltshaker from home and the issue of salt at meals never came up. The reduction in acrimony was amazing, so since then we travel with the salt shaker.

I didn't feel like I was imposing my will on others. (We only salted our own food.) I await your verdict and any suggestions you may have about how to deal with this type of issue in the future.

GENTLE READER: What shocks Miss Manners here is not that the use of salt could ignite a family feud. Vicious battles over trivial matters identified as etiquette problems (often matters about which etiquette couldn't care less) are all in her day's work.When people who are not normally etiquette-conscious go to pieces over a minute point such as this, you may be sure that worse problems underlie the surface complaint. (And people who genuinely believe in etiquette ignore such transgressions in those they are not charged with rearing.)

Does this mean that Miss Manners recommends dealing with the deeper problem instead? Well, that could be a lot harder and take a lot longer. What shocks -- and pleases -- her is that bringing your own salt shaker actually solved the problem.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My father says that it's polite to pick up the phone (even if you know someone has already picked it up) to see if it's for you.

I think that only one person should answer the phone, and if it's for someone else in the house to say one moment please, and go get the person. What do you think?

GENTLE READER: That your father wants to know who is calling you.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Every working day, I pass over a toll bridge on my way to and from work. In the summer, when I have the air conditioner turned on, I always turn it off as I approach the toll taker.

I was rather unconscious of this until recently when I had a passenger named Dave along, and as I reached for the on off switch Dave beat me to the punch. As we left the tollbooth, I switched the air conditioner back on and after a few seconds I asked Dave why he had done it.

He had no memory of doing so. We discussed this behavior for several minutes and concluded that somehow it seemed rude to have the cold air blasting out of the car as we were transacting our business with the toll taker.

Is this behavior covered by some more general rule or are we just being finicky?

GENTLE READER: Are you implying that there is something wrong with being finicky? Uh-oh.

Yet Miss Manners had never heard of this refinement, and it is all the more impressive that you were both unthinkingly polite. There is a lot of the other kind of unthinking behavior on the roads, including at toll booths, so if you promise Miss Manners that this is a real courtesy that doesn't hold up the works, she congratulates you both on the discovery.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please provide guidelines for terminating unpleasant conversations with a person seated next to me on an airplane.

On one journey, the fellow in the adjacent seat started a conversation by telling me that he was curious about my opinion of U.S. policy in Iraq. When I told him that I did not wish to discuss the subject, he loudly said: "Oh, then you just don't care about the troops."

Patiently, I told a falsehood, stating that my day had been difficult and that I simply wished to be alone.

Several months later, another passenger began a similar exchange and I perhaps overreacted by stating that I had no interest in his opinions and remained confident that we could finish the flight without another word to each other.

Although this worked, I visibly saddened. To avoid the social sin of committing verbal abuse or the intolerability of being the subject of such, I ask Miss Manners to suggest a utilitarian and perfectly polite sentence or two for turning one's fellow passengers to the "off" position.

GENTLE READER: Alas, this is how rudeness spreads. You reacted politely to rudeness, but then let the rude response you got push you into self-doubt and into being rude yourself on the next similar occasion.

The way to deal with such rude people is to refuse to deal with them, which you did. Being rude, he took a parting shot, but then you were quit of him.

In the second instance, you accomplished this by being rude yourself.

It was perfectly all right to say that you had had a difficult day and wished to be alone. It was even the literal truth, as your seatmate had created the difficulty and you did, indeed, wish him to leave you alone. It also worked. But did you really want to copy the manners of those you found offensive?

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