DEAR MISS MANNERS: I've read that it is acceptable to treat bacon strips as "finger food." A friend of mine argues that it is also acceptable to treat breakfast sausage links as finger food. I believe sausage links should be sliced and eaten with a fork.
Assuming we agree that breakfast sausage is not finger food, I have one more question. My friend will sometimes use a fork with her breakfast sausage, but she doesn't slice it into bite-size pieces. Instead, she stabs one end of the sausage link with her fork and then just bites off chunks as she goes (never really putting the fork down). I also believe this practice is improper. Who's right on this one?
GENTLE READER: Not the person who eats sausages as if they were lollipops, that's for sure. Why you choose to start the day with her, Miss Manners cannot imagine.
Sausages are eaten by hand only when they are discreetly enclosed in buns and eaten during baseball games. If you are eating breakfast at a reasonably formal restaurant, even bacon would not be finger food (which is a shame because it shatters when you attempt to eat it with a fork). If you share a home, Miss Manners would advise getting up after she has left the house.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am attending a trade school and there is a woman who attends the same school. We joined the same month and were in the same class for the first month. We sat next to each other in class and got along quite well. We then went off into separate tracks where we still see each other during breaks.
Here's the problem. I am convinced she is following rules from a book that strongly advocates that the female play hard-to-get. From what I remember, she is following its prescriptions to the letter.
I have never been suave with females and someone playing coy does absolutely nothing for me. If this whole idea is based on not communicating with me, how do I go about communicating the fact that she's completely wasting her time with these cutesy games and doing absolutely nothing to make herself more attractive to me?
I'd truly hate to give up on her as there did indeed seem to be something between us during that first month but I'm not about to play along and suggest that her game-playing did her any good.
GENTLE READER: You are therefore requesting a way to show interest in this lady while informing her that her behavior discouraged your interest. You are not asking much of Miss Manners, are you?
All right. You show interest in her by asking her out. If she refuses, you reply cheerfully, "Well, I know how busy you must be, so I won't pester you. But I'd be very pleased if you called me." And then you do nothing but greet her pleasantly when your paths happen to cross.
If she calls you, you were either mistaken or she has given up playing hard to get. If she never calls you, you are free to believe that it was out of coyness rather than disinterest, but the result is the same.
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