presents
table manners What Do You Do?: how to handle trouble at the table fancy dinners restaurants finger food problem foods finished
neighborhoods malls movies What Do You Do?: cautious courtesy good sports Quiz: the great outdoors Quiz: faraway lands
What Do You Do?: embarrassing moments
family gatherings What Do You Do?: family gatherings weddings funerals protocol
the basics
me first?
There’s a voice inside each of us that says
“Me first.”
It tells us to please ourselves—to take
what we want and do what we like,
never mind about anybody else. If “me
first” had its way, we’d spend our days
trampling on one another’s rights and
feelings, and pretty soon the world
would be a snarling mess.
This is where manners come in.
Manners aren’t a bunch of rules
dreamed up by fusspots who want
to cramp your style. Manners help
people get along together. They
make us nicer. They teach us to put
ourselves in the other person’s shoes.
A girl who chooses to use good manners is telling the world she
believes that other people matter as much as she does. She’s saying
that life isn’t about what one person does for herself but about
what people can do together for the common good.
So who decides what’s polite and what’s not? We all do.
When we talk about manners, we’re talking about how most people
in a certain time and place think people should behave. What’s
polite in one country isn’t always polite in another. What was rude
fifty years ago isn’t always rude today. Manners depend a lot on
custom—and different customs often live side by side.
In a way, manners are not so much
a set of rules as they are a language
you use to tell other people what
they can expect from you. The
better you know the language, the
more you can say.
Are you trustworthy?
Do you think only of yourself?
Would you make a good friend or
a poor one?
after you
The way you talk with a good friend when you’re flopped on the grass
is very different from the way you talk to the principal in the hallway
at school. You change your style without thinking. And that’s good.
Manners recognize differences between people. There are certain things
people do that say “You’re number one” or “Your needs come first.”
These actions are called signs of deference, and to lots of people they
symbolize good manners. They’re rooted in tradition—and in kindness.
Deference turns up in all sorts of ways in manners, but here are a few
of
