David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published March 11, 2003

We get a snoot full of bad manners

Look at that guy in the Chevy. He's picking his nose. With his thumb!

If I've seen it once I've seen it a million times -- someone mining in his car, totally oblivious that everyone at the intersection is staring and snickering.

Let's not kid ourselves, however. He's not the only picker in the world. I pick. Yes, I said it. You pick, too. You're not as obvious and crude as the guy in the Chevy, but you pick. We all pick. If you have a nose, at some point during your daily pursuits you will need an extraction. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just a matter of biology.

It's the when and where that count. It's a matter of manners, something sorely lacking among many of us.

A well-mannered person will defer his nasal comfort until he can find a more discreet time and place in which to, shall we say, disencumber himself.

That's what I do, and that's what you do. The guy in the Chevy is another story, and I suspect one of two things is going through his head (apart from his thumb). Either he's too stupid to realize people can see into his car despite the crystal-clear window, or he's so ill-mannered that he just doesn't care. Let's assume, for argument's sake, he has at least a smattering of intelligence. After all, he passed the driver's license test and earned enough money for the car.

That leaves the second option. He has bad manners.

(Parenthetically, if this guy is willing to pick his nose in public, where do his inhibitions begin? What else does he do among us? I shudder to think of the possibilities. The more troubling thought is what does he do behind closed doors? Again, I shudder. Also, and possibly most perplexing, if I begin a paragraph with the word "parenthetically," do I need to use the actual parentheses? It seems redundant, but if I don't use the parentheses, am I truly speaking parenthetically?)

When I'm talking about manners, I'm not concerned with which of the six forks you use with your salad at a formal dinner. To me, that's an issue of protocol, and unless you're a diplomat or head of state, it has very little bearing in the day-to-day real world.

However, standard table manners are important. I was raised with a fairly strict set of table manners, and those lessons live to this day and will no doubt be handed down to my brood. I sit up straight at the table. I don't put my elbows on the table. I don't smack my food. I say "please" and "thank you." I don't reach across the table for something, but rather ask that it be passed to me. Before leaving the table, I ask to be excused. (I'm a little soft on that last one, but you get the idea.)

With those manners firmly in place, I find myself cringing a lot when the four of us eat at a restaurant. My wife has very good manners, and my infant son sleeps through most of the meal. That leaves my toddler. She, well, let's just say it's tough to explain manners at this age. She can single-handedly turn a pleasant dinner into the cafeteria scene from Animal House.

That's why we don't dine out with her much. It's simply not worth it. Why pay for something you're not going to enjoy? It's a simple cost-benefit analysis. She's a normal nearly-2-year-old, and that means much of her meal winds up under her highchair. Immersed in guilt, my wife and I use our fingers, unused forks and napkins to clean up the mess before we leave. If we can't do a satisfactory job, we'll over-tip the waiter. And if she or the baby start crying or screaming uncontrollably, we get up and leave ASAP.

Let me tell you about a letter to Miss Manners I recently read. It seems a man, his wife and adult son were marking a special occasion with dinner at a fairly posh and pricey eatery. The festivities were marred, however, by an infant's incessant and uncontrolled wailing in a nearby booth.

"My wife and son thought my response to this situation was inappropriate," the man wrote. "... As the screaming infant and his daddy passed our booth on the way out, I yelled that the little snot had ruined my dinner. My only concession to good taste is that I should have screamed at the father, rather than the infant."

I knew what Miss Manners' response would be before I read it. In essence, two wrongs don't make a right. Ever the wit, she responded that "... people who yell, scream and squall should be removed from restaurants (even reasonably priced ones). Evidently, your wife and son feel the same way about you."

Hey, at least the guy didn't have a thumb up his nose when he said it.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.