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Show I Good Taste Today BY EMILY POST Author oj "ETIQUETTE," "THE BLUE BOOK OF SOCIAL USAGE," ETC. HniiMm ig 1 t f I 'l t it"tt"f "f "T tT"T"i "" BLIND DATES DEAR Mrs. Post: Will you tell me whether I was prudish in my point of view and whether you think I am ,1ust missing a lot of good times, which could otherwise be mine. This is what happened : A short while ago. before college reopened, my college roommate was going out with her boy friend to an evening cabaret. We both live in Chicago. Her mother did not want her to go to a late dance with the boy alone. So she asked me to go with them and they had a blind date for me, with a friend of his. He was not especially Interesting and only a fair dancer but we had a pleasant evening. I wouldn't care if I never saw him again but then, too, 1 would just as soon go out with him again if there was no one else who offered. A few evenings ago this boy called up and said he had a friend from St. Paul, a young business man who was the finest kind of man and coming to Chicago Chi-cago for two days, and that he had made a "blind" date for me with the St. Paul man to take me out for dinner din-ner and go to dance afterwards. He himself couldn't go out with us because be-cause he is on the football squad. He said the St. Paul man would call for me at seven o'clock and that I would have a wonderful time. I don't know why I behaved as I did. I could not help it. I told him that having my time engaged for me to go out with a total stranger was not my idea of a wonderful time, and that nothing would induce me to make that kind of a blind date, and that I was not a taxi dancer, and then I hung up. Now, of course, everything is all wrong. We are back in college, my roommate will hardly speak to me because be-cause her boy friend is angry because I was rude to his friend. Finally, my roommate said she would leave it to you to decide who was right and who was wrong. Answer : It seems to me that you were right. It was entirely proper to go out with your roommate and her friend and whoever they might have invited to make a fourth. But to have gone out with the St. Paul man, as coolly arranged for you by a practical stranger, or in fact to go out alone with any man you did not know unless un-less under very extenuating circumstances circum-stances would have been extremely cheap. At the same time you may have been rude in the way you refused re-fused to be a taxi dancer. This depends de-pends on whether your voice was i amiably casual, or angry. So you see? NAMES DEAR Mrs. Post: I was named for my father, who died when I was very young. For more than twenty-five twenty-five years I have continued to use I John Smith, Jr., as my name. I know that I am John Smith and should j write my name without junior suffixed to it. But my father achieved some j prominence and I hesitate to take his name even now. Please write your opinion of my case, j Answer : I think you yourself have given the only opinion there is to give. Actually you are now John Smith, but I have no idea whether the laws of your own state would compel you to sign your name or engrave your visiting visit-ing cards or even to change your bank signature. I do happen to know of a number of men who for one reason or another continued to call themselves junior long after the death of their fathers. I also know of others, who. during their fathers' lives, have taken off the name junior by adding middle mid-dle names. Apparently a man considers consid-ers his name is his own to do with as he likes. But whether he has the legal right to make these changes, I don't know. Dear Mrs. Post: Should an unmar-. unmar-. led woman register in a hotel as Carol Jones or Miss Carol Jones? If miss is included, is it written as an undivided part of her name? Answer : She writes Miss Carol Jones exactly as in addressing an envelope. en-velope. She puts miss In parenthesis in front of her signature at the end of a letter to a stranger who does not know whether she is Miss or Mrs., or in your particular case, Mr. My dear Mrs. Post : What should the young children at our school be I taught to call a handy man whose duties also include driving the bus which brings them to and takes them from school every day? He Is not a young man and we don't want them to be disrespectful to him, and yet don't know whether we should expect the children to say "Mr. Jones" or not? Answer : I think it depends upoD what you call him. If he is Silas to you, the chances are the children will call him Silas, too. You can, of course, make a point of it and tell them that j it is polite to call him Mr. because of his age. by Emily Post. WNU Service. |