The Matter of Manners
I’m going to be completely honest here and tell you that if you are dining in my space I am judging you. Sorry but it’s true. I have spent too many dinners with a kid leaning over the banquette picking his nose and yelling into my husband’s ear about how fish is gross and pickles make you burp. Many a fabulous meal has been ruined by a fellow diner picking his teeth with his knife, answering his phone, pilfering food off another’s plate or eating with his fingers. Miss Manners where are you?
I am so fed up with sitting in earshot of diners talking with mouths full of food and guzzling wine like Gatorade. If I can see what you are eating while you are chewing it, I am taking offence, I promise. Perhaps I’m a little over sensitive because we have been dining out a lot lately for one occasion or another. Maybe I’m over generalizing; I will admit that a vast majority of diners are well composed. A great many also possess manners that would disgust a troop of poo flinging monkeys.
In the interest of improving my dining experiences and the appetites of the many friends, I conducted a little informal survey of sorts and was offered the following…
• Fork to face not face to plate
• Sip not slurp
• Swallow first, speak later
• Lips tight – food out of sight
• Face your plate, sit and wait
• It’s a knife not a hacksaw
• A 10oz. steak is not a 2 bite brownie
• Bread and ribs are the only finger permissible foods – unless silverware is not supplied by the establishment
• It’s a napkin not a bib
• Exits from the body demand exit from the table
• It’s not a race – diner should take as long to eat as it took to reach your plate.
• Shut your $% phone off.
Oh I could go on all day, I got a lot of great frustrated responses, these just seemed to me the most indigestion inducing offences.
The number one complaint…(and I bet you can guess)…“kids who don’t have manners”
You know I’m talking about that booger eater dangling his cheese covered fork inches from your cashmere sweater. If you are wearing a cashmere sweater I promise you will get the table next to this kid, not the one over by the fireplace with the sweet ‘please and thank you’ children sitting nearby colouring quietly on their place-mats.
What makes the difference? Practice. Good manners don’t just magically appear in public, those kids and parents are practising at home, they are dining around the table, using please and thank you. Dad is sending kids to time out for flinging peas at their sibling and Mom is ignoring every comment made with a mouth full of macaroni. Many dinners are ending in tears and many are ending in folly but in defiance of how obstinate those kids can be, Mom and Dad are persisting, eating tums like after dinner mints and calling red wine a ‘dinner accompaniment.’ They are correcting and leading by example. Some parents (bless their table manner dedication) even offer gentle correction to little friends who stay for supper.
To these parents I say Bravo! Not only are you saving the dining experience for the rest of us but you are setting your kids up for remarkable futures. Futures filled with second dates and successful business lunches. You are saving them from diners like myself, one soufflé away from launching an ‘in your face manner intervention’ on the next guy who stuffs his mouth with bread and yells at a server to bring him another beer.
It’s going to happen; it’s only a matter of time.
You can also find Michelle at her blog The Space Between Raindrops, sharing wisdom, gratitude and humour.
