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Second Post

Dear Old Fart,

I have an embarrassing cross-cultural problem right here in my own country.  It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I want to flee and hide in a dark closet!  I am not a snob (please don’t accuse me), but, I’m sorry, I do not “high five”.

What is “high five” anyway? Who started this hideous, spontaneous maneuver and what on earth is it meant to signify?  A “high five” happened to me just the other day, as it happens.  I was shopping with some people I didn’t know very well, and standing in the green-grocer aisle, I made an innocent comment to one one of the party…something like, “Oh boy, I think I got these avocados at a bargain!”  The next thing I knew, a hand the size of a baseball mitt was enthusiastically wind-milling its way up into the air…to meet mine!  But, mine was not there. No. I suddenly had to sneeze, you see, so I found myself rustling in my handbag for a Kleenex. It was a narrow escape.

The young man, I could tell, felt a bit miffed, as if I’d just been introduced to him and refused to shake his hand.  Well, I’d certainly not have avoided a handshake, but, as I said right at the beginning, I do not “high-five”.

Trusting you’ll affirm my good sense.

Yours sincerely,

Ms. C

Dear Ms. C

Clearly you have either been away a long time or you do not watch team sports on television. It is one of the ways professional athletes congratulate one another for a good play. It is the equivalent – in intent – of a handshake. Another is to leap in to the air while turning your back to the other chap while he is doing the same and you click bums. The next time your young man attempts a high five respond with this move and with any luck you will get him right in the kisser.

TOF

First Post in Etiquette Period Blog

Dear Old Fart

I have been noticing lately an increasing number of restaurants embracing the “small plates” or “small bites” concept:  a tapas-style approach to “dining”, rather than the traditional menu format of entrée, plat, dessert.

Whence this phenomenon?  Is the trend economy-driven (ie: restaurants can charge a lot more for the same amount of food when it’s spread over several plates)?  Or is it a reaction to customer rebellion when portions got unappetizingly big (ie: customers started to order two first courses rather than a first and a main, leaving chefs short, as mains are the more expensive)?

When portions went Gargantuan in restaurants, there was another way in which customers handled the problem, and perhaps this too initiated the “small bites” trend. There you would be in a restaurant with a party of, say, six, just about to order a succulent sea bass dish all to yourself, when some self-declared leader-type would belt out the rhetorical question: “Shall we just get four dishes and share?!”  There was the end of your sea bass. (And the chef’s sale of six.)

May I say this?  I DO NOT WANT TO SHARE.

During drinks, maybe. But, to define “dinner” as forks violently flying from plate to plate, dropping food sloppily on the table in between and nearly taking out eyes…no thanks.  I’d rather dine with a flock of starved pigeons. Seen another way, it’s like interminable cocktail party, only here with the trouble of implements, where we stuff ourselves cross-eyed on a cacophonous overdose of the superficial.

I blame technology, sneaking its evil, greedy way into the dining room.  Watching television, these days, seems almost as archaic as curling up for a long session with an illuminated manuscript, what with the internet having grabbed all the viewers with shows lasting no more than minutes, or even seconds.  With “small bites” now joining us at the dinner table, they are starting, insidiously, to nibble away at civilization itself. I don’t like it. Give me back my dinner!

Yours sincerely,

Ms. C