DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is there anything short of homicide that I can do to stave off pro-sports fever and its yapping fans?

I am besieged to "pray for" our local sports team, reschedule social events or cancel them outright, stay up all night and listen to 24/7 coverage from the news media, co-workers and a drunk who sidled up to me at a bar.

Last weekend was the final straw. We attended a lovely birthday dinner. At the stroke of 8 p.m., the guests leapt up from the table and stampeded into the living room to watch "THE GAME," leaving the host, who is disabled, and a few stragglers behind at the table.

During commercials, these jerks stampeded back for cake. I was furious and spoke my mind, but soon realized I was making no impression, and I put my cake hole to better use.

Can anything get through to these bores? I take the stance that I am allowed to pay as much attention to pro-sports teams as they pay to me, which is none. Yet people insist on blathering on endlessly about them. Stop the lunacy. I want to get off.

GENTLE READER: It is not hard to discourage people from including you in sports talk. Just inquire politely what sport is played by the team for which they ask you to pray. If that doesn't work, then ask them to explain the rules of the game.

But if your social events are being interrupted and canceled by those who believe that sports events trump all obligations and duties, you need to develop a set of friends who not only practice better manners but share your own interests. You might start with your dinner host and those guests whom you described as stragglers. What were you and they talking about when the others left the room? And why (since Miss Manners presumes that you were not in the midst of telling your host how rude you found his absent guests) did you stop?

You cannot prevent others from having their own interests. But you can eat their cake while they are absent from the room.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: The other day, I was in a bathroom at a restaurant, and to find out whether a stall was occupied, I knocked on the door. The response was a muffled "'Scuse me," which made me look around to see whether I was in someone's way.

What is the proper response to a knock on a bathroom door? My feeling is that the woman had every right to be in that stall, so there should have been no need to excuse herself. My mother taught me to say the very obvious "Someone's in here."

Also, what are your thoughts on looking under the stall door? A little peek at the feet can't be bad, can it?

GENTLE READER: No peeking. People have gotten into serious trouble that way.

Miss Manners is afraid that you believe that apologies necessarily indicate blame. But while the occupant of the stall is obviously blameless, there is no doubt that anyone else who wants to use the stall is being inconvenienced. It is therefore polite to say, "Sorry, I'll be out soon."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: An old friend of mine was recently incarcerated and, assuming he would like visitors, I will be going to see him in the coming months. This friend lives far away, and under different circumstances we would have met for coffee and updated each other on our lives.

I'm a bit at a loss as how to go about that, or any other sort of polite conversation in this situation.

I realize that his life has gone from bad to worse in recent months, so asking "How have you been?" seems insensitive. It also seems rude to talk about my own life, which I'm happy with.

What are the appropriate questions to ask someone who's a resident of the state? "How's the food?"

GENTLE READER: Ah, no. Not a good one. Neither is "How are they treating you?"

The rule in dealing with sad situations is to let those in them decide whether or how much they want to discuss it. Thus you open with a sympathetic but neutral observation, such as "I've been worried about you" and let your friend direct the conversation.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I recently got married and treated our 250 guests to a five-course dinner, drinks and dancing. We also hosted an after-party, which offered more food, drinks and dancing. We basically threw a party for our family and friends that lasted seven hours.

My career background has always been in the nonprofit sector, and as a result, I believed that my husband and I should have a charity registry for our wedding. We expected that some guests might feel more comfortable giving us a personal gift, and that's fine, but we wanted the focus to be on supporting causes that matter most to us.

The wedding was wonderful and pretty much everyone stayed until the end and had a great time.

It has been a month now since the wedding and nearly half of my guests not only didn't donate to our charities, but they opted to give us nothing at all. The registry was listed on our wedding Web site (as well as our RSVP), so there is really no way they could have missed it. We feel like they just took advantage of the situation and thought we wouldn't notice.

It's not about the gift itself; it's the principle. We really want to write something, but we don't want to be tacky about it. What should we do?

GENTLE READER: Send them a bill for the dinner and drinks?

Chastise them for reneging on a charitable commitment that you so generously made for them without their consent?

This is about the gift, not the principle, Miss Manners must inform you. No principle allows you to charge people for attending your wedding. Wedding presents may be customary, but they are still given voluntarily, at the discretion of the guests.

Your wanting to collect their money for a good cause does not whitewash the situation. You still cannot complain that they owe you for having attended your wedding.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A novel I once read imagined a woman winning the U.S. presidency. Her husband was referred to as the first husband.

Aside from the fact that it seems that the masculine equivalent of the First Lady should be the first gentleman, would it not seem reasonable to Miss Manners that a female president could have a first lady?

In American history, the first lady has not always been the wife of the president. When the president was widowed or a bachelor, a close female relative served as the White House hostess and thus was known as the first lady.

Now that it appears that the United States may soon have a female president -- if not with this election, surely with one in the near future -- does it not seem reasonable that such a president could ask her mother, daughter, sister or other close female relative to serve as the first lady and spare her husband the need to take over the east wing of the White House?

A ruling from Miss Manners would be greatly appreciated.

GENTLE READER: She is delighted to oblige, provided we begin with the admission that "first lady" is an unoffical and rather silly title. Miss Manners agrees with Jacqueline Kennedy, who said it made her sound like a horse.

The president's spouse is a private citizen with no official rank, and thus is properly addressed, in writing and in person, as Mrs. Washington (with neither her nor her husband's given name; she would be THE Mrs. Washington, with no danger of being mistaken for Mrs. Chuck Washington).

However, courtesy accords precedence to her, or to another lady serving as the president's hostess. This was referred to, in the era of more complicated and more rigorously observed precedence systems, as her being "the first lady of the land."

Hence the title. But its history does not go back all that far. There was a lot of backsliding when egalitarianism was new around here, and Mrs. Washington was often called "Lady Washington," while Mrs. Madison relished being called "Her Majesty." Even when the title of "first lady" became popular, it never applied to the nonspouses who served as hostesses.

A female president would be the hostess at state occasions; she cannot designate another lady to preside and therefore outrank her socially. What she would need, in addition to the professionals already provided for putting on such events, is an understanding public that does not keep asking for her recipes and notions about flower-arranging.

And now to the husband. If anything is sillier than "first lady," it is "first husband" (unless this is necessary to distinguish him from a marital successor also on the scene). He would be the host, and addressed simply by his name and "Mr." or another honorific he held, such as general or governor.

Perhaps this is the place to say once again that American protocol dictates that only one person at a time can hold the title of president of the United States. Former presidents should never be so addressed, although they have even taken to calling one another that. Miss Manners would have thought that having reached that position would surely have cured anyone of status anxiety.

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