I have a guilty pleasure. I love etiquette books. I can spend endless hours with Emily and Peggy. My mother bought me the classic tome of manners for college graduation, Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette, 50th Anniversary Edition. I squealed when I saw it. She knows her daughter is an etiquette whore. If you doubt the lopsided little gems to be pulled from these archaic volumes, listen to Marjabelle Young Stewart on social introductions:
Children: Your children should be introduced to all business and social friends when you meet them. Until your daughter is eighteen, she is presented to others. After age eighteen, she should be accorded the status of an adult woman, and men are presented to her.
Oh, the world of coming-out parties and cloth napkins. Luncheon sized for mid-day and full sized napkins for the evenings. This is the stuff of dreams.
Even the advice books that attempt modern relevance can’t help creaking about like dinosaurs. Marjabelle’s subtitle to The New Etiquette is Real Manners for Real People in Real Situations – An A-Z Guide. The entries on Hispanic and Mango are particularly hilarious.
Meanwhile, I am completely socially inept.
My best friend Alicia was trained at at finishing school for young ladies, much like Sally Swift's Baldwin School for Girls. Like Sally, she could introduce me to the leaders of foreign nations, if the occasion ever arose, and serve us all a formal tea. I’m openly jealous of the ability to “gracefully lower ourselves into a chair, gently cross our legs at the ankle, tuck them slightly back, hands folded in our laps, posture ramrod straight.”
I was watching TV at Alicia’s house recently, looked away from Curb Your Enthusiasm to direct a remark at her, and there she was, sitting on the sofa in her own home in perfect New England posture. I laughed at her and she didn't even know she was doing it. She slumps down on the sofa to imitate me and looks like a drunken linebacker. I laugh too, but dear God, is that really how I behave?
On Alicia’s advice, I’ve taken to not wearing skirts because I don’t have what another etiquette writer called “thigh discipline.” I can’t keep my legs closed.
It goes without saying that social occasions are laughably painful for me. I have a terrifically bad memory, stumble over names, slump when feeling defiant, touch people too much, and drink aggressively. Oh it’s a horror show. My family didn’t raise me like this. I don’t blow my nose in public or cuss in company. But I lack all sense of polish and verve. I’ve wondered if I don’t have a bit of Aspergers.
In the meantime I consume etiquette books like a starving third-world refugee destined for the shores of America, determined to learn everything about my new society before arrival. I know family notes mailed out after the recent death of a loved one should be written on black bordered paper. I understand that a briefcase should be carried in the left hand so that the right is always free to shake. Exceptions to this include when one is a Boy Scout. Scouts shake with their left hands when meeting fellow Scouts.
What do Boy Scouts do in Saudi Arabia, where touching others with the left hand is an insult? Do they even have Saudi Arabian Boy Scouts?
Don't get me started on the terror I feel over the prospect of ever orchestrating a wedding. Place cards? Seriously?
Meanwhile,I am given to understand that it is no longer de rigueur for women to enter and exit an elevator before men. Well things are apparently different here in Austin. The daily dance at the elevator bank of my downtown high-rise usually involves three to five executives in bespoke suits stepping aside and looking at me with puzzlement when I don’t assume my natural right as a female and promptly advance to the elevator doors. It seems that I’m holding them all up. What? I’m just the new secretary to…oh Jesus never mind. So now do I say “thank you” when they do this? It’s too annoying.
I may be too late for finishing school with my leg-splaying, head-in-the-clouds attitude toward the presence of others. But at least I know not to reapply my lipstick in front of company after a meal, and of all horrors, not at the table. I'm tucking away that little tid-bit for the day I'm sure I'll get to put it to good use.