Each week, Miss Manners answers questions exclusively from the MSN audience on all of your etiquette dilemmas. (Have an issue you want help with? Send in a question today or talk about your own problems on our Miss Manners message board.) Read on for this week's hot topics:
Dear Miss Manners,
I have an issue that I've been dealing with my entire life. I'm 33. I have a birthmark around my eye that bears the appearance of a black eye. I wear make-up to soften the "blow," but I am still often asked "What happened to your eye?" This question always comes from complete strangers and usually from those serving me at check-in counters, restaurants, or other retail places.
I always respond "It's my birthmark." However, I have come to resent feeling the need to answer what I believe is a very rude question. Whether my mark is natural or from a bar fight is none of their business, considering they will never see me again and are only asking out of nosiness, not true concern.
Being asked this question makes me very uncomfortable and self-conscious. Having a facial disfigurement is hard enough without having it brought to my attention when I'm just trying to order a sandwich or check-in at the airport!
Can you offer me a quick phrase that lets the person know that their question is very rude and frankly, none of their business? I've tried to think of a response that I'd actually feel comfortable saying, and haven't had much luck yet.
Gentle Reader,
The answer should be that nothing happened to your eye (as indeed it did not, certainly not within your memory), but you would like to know what happened to your sandwich or your boarding pass. Miss Manners does not require you to cooperate with nosy strangers.
*******
Dear Miss Manners,
Recently I co-hosted a neighborhood get-together at a friend's home. I arranged for someone to provide a program and activity for the group. We provided refreshments, and the hostess's son and his family, who were visiting, arranged to spend the evening out so they would be out of the way.
The other five people who had accepted the invitation and said they would come never showed up. The three of us had a wonderful time (and an extra piece of cheesecake each), but am I right in feeling steamed about being stood up? I asked this person to give up her evening to provide a program for us. I was embarrassed and the hostess was more than a little disappointed.
I composed a tersely worded email for the list of invitees, but good sense told me not to send it. I was taught that the only thing worse than committing a gaffe was correcting someone else's. Is there anything I can do besides never host another get together for this group?
Gentle Reader,
Can you punish them?
Miss Manners understands the impulse to vilify them for being callous and rude, but, as you recognize, lashing out at them would be rude. It has to be done quietly and slowly.
Of course you cross them off your guest list. In addition, whenever you see each in the neighborhood, you can ask, in a tone of sympathetic alarm, whether that person was stricken ill that night or had some other emergency that prevented keeping his or her word.
Judith Martin's latest book is No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice. She is also the author ofMiss Manners' Guide toExcruciatingly Correct Behavior(Freshly Updated). She and her husband, a scientist and playwright, live in Washington, D.C. They have two perfect children, of course.
