DEAR MISS MANNERS: It recently occurred to me that two habits I have might be uncouth. You seem like the best person to ask.

I do not dry my hair by artificial means. It looks best if I allow it to air dry. Consequently, if I wash it in the morning, I often leave the house with damp hair.

Is this a bad habit? Recently, I heard someone in passing disparage someone else for leaving the house with wet hair. (She and I did not know each other, so I know she wasn't talking about me.)

Also, I usually dry the insides of my ears with cotton tips in the morning, but sometimes they are still damp when I leave the house. If they are damp, they get cold. What is the best way to dry the insides of my ears when I'm in my car on my way to work?

As I type this, I realize fingers are probably not the couth option, but that's what I've been using.

GENTLE READER: Yes, we all use our fingers to type. But what, pray tell, are you using to steer your car? And are you telling Miss Manners that you are plastered with wet hair and feel the cold only in your already swabbed ears?

Come now. Hair that appears wet, whether from washing, swimming or spraying, is not an etiquette crime. Trifling with Miss Manners' good nature may be.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the polite way of addressing an orchestra conductor in an e-mail or letter?

GENTLE READER: Maestro (or Maestra). They love it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: During the course of a dinner party which I hosted for two long-term, close (too long? too close?) friends, I was stunned when their conversation took a turn toward some of my flaws, which, evidently, were more bothersome to them than I was aware.

In turn, I was labeled as controlling, indecisive, tough, and, my personal favorite, "spoiled."

Given that I had just spent the day and a good part of the week planning and preparing an evening especially for these two friends and their husbands, I was stunned and more than a little hurt.

However, following your advice -- and my mother's -- I resisted the urge to reciprocate in kind. While I thought my mother had prepared me quite well in both language and etiquette, I imagine such a scenario was not within her post-Victorian repertoire! Your advice as to what a proper response should have been or, God forbid, should be if such an event occurs in future?

GENTLE READER: It is true that you cannot challenge anyone to a duel while that person is a guest in your house. Nevertheless, you were roundly insulted, despite your attackers' believing that they were only being honest and it was for your own good.

A good hostess would try to accommodate her guests. Miss Manners recommends standing up and saying, "You are very good to accept my hospitality, considering what you think of me. But I wouldn't dream of imposing on you any longer."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend who is a most genteel man revealed that in a frustrated moment, after being in an hour-long loop of voice recognition commands for -- I use this term advisedly -- "customer service" of a major airline, he shouted the most vulgar expression in the English language into the telephone.

To his surprise, he was immediately connected with a supervisor who solved his problem instantly.

Last week, after a bout with a telephone answering service that did not recognize the words "help," "operator," "live body" and the like, I too looked around to be sure my children were out of hearing and shouted "f---" into the telephone.

To my shock, this phrase worked with my health insurer. I later brought this up with my husband, who turned red and shame-facedly admitted that he, too, had used this method to get through to a different airline.

I feel the practice of American corporations programming the phrase "f--- you" into their lexicon of recognized words, and the fact that this brings the fastest results, is truly demeaning to our culture. Would you please use your bully pulpit to request a universal, clean phrase to replace the current magic words?

GENTLE READER: How about "Customer service, please"? No doubt this is programmed to produce a recorded laugh.

Miss Manners is not so naive as to expect the argument of civility or human dignity to be effective in appealing to airlines, let alone health insurers. But she will ask them this:

Which customer would you prefer to have aboard? The one who quietly goes to another airline when yours doesn't respond satisfactorily, or the one who turns vicious when encountering a delay?

Note to Gentle Readers: Please do not use the information contained in the question as a tip. Please?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My ex-boyfriend and I did not part ways amicably, primarily because he cheated. Unfortunately, our social and professional circles overlap to such an extent that it has been impossible to completely avoid contact with him in the three years since we broke up. Our relationship is polite but not friendly, and it would not bother me in the least if I never saw him again.

He is now engaged to be married, and for unfathomable reasons, he and his fiancee (who knows nothing of our relationship) sent me a wedding invitation. Am I obliged to send a gift?

GENTLE READER: No, and you didn't even need to supply the interesting backstory. If everyone who received and declined a wedding invitation were obligated to send a present, greedy couples would be blanketing society with invitations to people they hardly know.

And come to think of it, some of them are.

The recipient's basic obligation is simply to respond quickly. Nevertheless, Miss Manners hopes you can find it in your heart to do the additionally charming thing and write the bride, if not the couple, a note wishing them well.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a neighbor, a single man, who invites me, a single woman, to his house to share his hot tub. The hot tub is secluded and cannot be seen from the street. In the beginning, he wore a bathing suit, but now he wears nothing. Except for neighborly chit-chat, there is no other relationship between us. I am very uncomfortable with his nudity and don't want to sit with him in that state.

How can I let him know this makes me uncomfortable? I hate to keep refusing his invitations because I want to stay on friendly terms with my neighbors; but telling him his nudity makes me uncomfortable seems embarrassing to him and to me.

GENTLE READER: It makes you uncomfortable to sit in a tub with a naked man you hardly know?

How do you think your situation makes Miss Manners feel? Whatever happened to questions from young ladies worried about the impropriety of having tea with gentlemen in their bachelor quarters?

Ah, well. You needn't tell Miss Manners that times have changed. She has noticed.

But she thought that this included ladies no longer being too bashful to speak up. However, she agrees that the cliche of "not feeling comfortable" would not do. It invites a condescending conversation about your inhibitions.

Rather, Miss Manners recommends your saying, "Will you be wearing a bathing suit?" and if the reply is no, adding, "Well, then, thank you, but no." The gentleman is then left free to decide whether he prefers your company or his own nudity.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My friend has a son who is a child prodigy, 8 years old and brilliant. On a regular basis, my friend corrects his English. This is not episodic but occurs very often between father and son. Consequently, the boy has a vocabulary that exceeds that of most adults.

During a recent visit with a family friend, he corrected her English. She reported back to his father how rude it is for children to correct adults regardless of if they are right or not.

But he was not rude when he told the lady that she used an incorrect word. He simply stated a fact. The boy's father corrects him often, and so he corrected an adult in charge.

What is the rule? If a child is correct, the adult is wrong, who is right? Is it impolite for an 8-year-old child to correct the English of an adult?

GENTLE READER: Yes. Your friend is doing a dreadful job of teaching this poor boy how to communicate with others.

Right or wrong is not the point; the point is that it is embarrassing to be corrected in front of other people. If the boy himself is so accustomed to having his father correct him in public, just wait until he is a bit older and wants to impress someone from that public.

This is not to say that Miss Manners agrees with your notion that age is irrelevant to manners. Parents do have to teach and correct their children, and there are times when this cannot be concealed from onlookers. But whatever they can do to maintain the dignity of their children will serve as an example of how the children should treat others.

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