DEAR MISS MANNERS
My husband and I had our friends, a husband and wife, over for dinner one evening, and we were all talking and listening to music. She and I got up to go into the kitchen to get drinks, when my husband said to her husband, "Your wife is so pretty."She and I both heard it loud and clear. She just giggled about it. I felt as if someone had stabbed me in the heart - I was so hurt.
I didn't feel it was proper to give a compliment of that nature to another man's wife, especially in front of me. It made me feel like an old dishrag.
I told my husband later that I was hurt and that I thought it was wrong of him to say that. He said I was overreacting.
The man's wife and I have been very good friends for about six months, because we do the same kind of work and have children close in age. We talk to each other every day. Now I don't feel like socializing with them as couples.
Once my husband said that she was wearing a pretty outfit, and once he said she had pretty eyes. These comments stung a little at the time, but I just forgot about them. However, this recent comment has really bothered me and hurt me deeply.
GENTLE READER - Miss Manners is afraid that if you think a loyal husband must not only believe his wife to be the prettiest woman in the world, but also the only pretty woman in the world, you are in for a lifetime of dishrag-hood - or deceit.
Miss Manners hardly thinks that your husband is planning a campaign of seduction based on feeding the lady a line via her husband. But the choice you now offer him is to defy you or to dissemble his feelings. Either way would give you a good chance to learn the meaning of that phrase about being stabbed in the heart, which you now use over a normal triviality.
And isn't your friend pretty? Then why not say so? In fact, you should be saying so. She is your friend, isn't she?
Besides, agreeing with your husband's compliments is the most charming way to indicate your closeness in front of others.
DEAR MISS MANNERS - A young lady is sharing a home with my son. She has become pregnant. They have no plans to be married but hope to continue living together.
How do I introduce her and the grandchild to my friends or relatives?
GENTLE READER - Your grandchild is introduced as your grandchild, and his mother is introduced as the mother of your grandchild. Miss Manners is hoping that you are not asking for a correct form in which to point out that the child is illegitimate, because polite society does not consider this to be necessary.
DEAR MISS MANNERS - The nature of my job and workplace requires me and hundreds of other people with similar positions to be in constant movement from place to place, all day long. Whenever someone is in my intended path, and this happens several times a day, I say "excuse me" to induce him or her to shift out of the way so that I may pass.
Around my manager and co-workers, however, this phrase always evokes the response "What, did you do something?" They are implying that I have just burped, or worse.
They insist that "excuse me" is all wrong for the situations in which I use it, and that "pardon me" is the appropriate request.
I thought that the meanings were reversed, or that the two phrases could be used interchangeably.
GENTLE READER - Do not, repeat not, accept etiquette advice from people who have routinely been meeting the practice of courtesy with sarcasm.
That's the first point Miss Manners wishes to make. The second is that they happen to be wrong.
"Excuse me" is the proper modern phrase for mild disruptions, as well as for minor infractions. ("Worse," as you delicately put it, requires no statement at all, as polite people agree to pretend that it has not happened.)
And while "pardon me" is not wrong (notice how more kindly Miss Manners takes motivation into consideration than your colleagues do), it is slightly outmoded as a request. "Pardon me" tends to have an edge to it, as if the person did not really feel obliged to be pardoned - which, come to think of it, is probably why it appeals to your supercilious advisers.
Feeling incorrect? Address your etiquette questions (in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper) to Miss Manners, in care of the Deseret News, P.O. Box 1257, Salt Lake City, UT 84110. The quill shortage prevents Miss Manners from answering questions except through this column.