OCR Text |
Show High Time MmO W D Tift Easoes'll By FLORENCE BITTNER Manners are what mothers e,aJm up ,0 P'a8ue 'heir children with. The natural way is the easiest, and who wants to bother with all that nonsense, and besides, the Kids will laugh at me. I'M NOT going to say I've made gentlemen out of my boys, but at least I've made Jon quit leaning on his elbow while he shovels the food in at plate level. My mother used to say our people were too close to pioneers to have genteel manners. There simply hadn't been time to develop the quiet good breeding which settled societies produce in their young. SHE SAID it takes three generations from pioneer to lady. Some of the pioneers were ladies, but they didn't . have time to leave the plow and loom long enough to teach their chidlren the social graces, and the next generation genera-tion was too busy working up towards education and a home of their own to take time to teach kids which fork to use. The third generation has time to be established and can then begin to pay attendtion to the niceties. WHEN MY brood was small, I was too occupied with getting food into them to care how they got it there. Then one day Carol said, "If they are going to shove it in like that, why don't you set the table with a trough and scoop shovel." So I decided it was time for a crash course in manners. I went to the library and brought home a whole stack of etiquette books. One of the first things I found out is that no two of them agree on the fine points. ONE SAID under no circumstances cir-cumstances could you eat chicken with your fingers. The next said it was OK at luncheons when accompanied with trench fries. The third said go ahead and eat it with your fingers, just don't lick them. How to eat olives and pickles was another fine point the experts disagreed on. Their advice ranged from the knife and fork (can you imagine a knife on an olive?) to go ahead and pick them up with your fingers. AFTER discussing the problem with the boys, they decided to give up on olives and pickles except when they can snitch them before anyone gets to the table. How to get food onto the fork is another problem which occasioned considerable discussion dis-cussion at our dinner table. WHEN you've always used a thumb to load potatoes onto your spoon, it takes all the flavor out of the food to have a piece of bread substitute for the thumb, and then to have a fork shoved into your hand instead of your old friendly spoon, to heck with it. One expert said the knife should be used as a pusher instead of a piece of bread, but that one just went sailing over the heads of my brood. ONE BATTLE I have won. I stopped opening doors when the boys were around. This resulted in my being left outside out-side quite a lot, but. they usually missed me when they got hungry and wondered why mother was still standing outside waiting to get into the house. They have learned to open doors, but they still step on my feet in the process. Oh well. One step at a time. Napkins were easy. They had been surrepticiously wip- ing their greasy little chins on the table cloth. I started using place mats, and they are no good at all for wiping on. FM JUST edging them onto the idea of holding the chair for a lady and standing when older people walk into the room. First I have to get their attention which begins by placing my opaque body between them and the TV set. Then they are ready for the current instructions. I won't go so far as to say my children have manners. No. What I won't go so far as to say is that my children have good manners. Manners they have, but not always the ones outlined in the books. SOMETIMES they improvise im-provise as they go along, but I have decided if their intentions in-tentions are good and they don't tromp on anyone and they manage to get their food into their hollow spaces with a minimum of trauma to onlookers, they will pass in most society. Since the books don't agree anyhow, we might as well make up our own. Maybe one day I'll write my own book. |