Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-12-30 - 1:09 p.m.

Rethinking the Manners Thing

This my first Official Retraction.

A friend noted that HE mops his beef juice with a roll, thereby saving the need for butter, which is bad for you. And here I wrote that mopping your plate is bad form. Which leads me to the guilty admission that I, too, mop my plate with bread when not out in company. In fact, I don't think we had bread that night, but if we had, I would have mopped my salad plate with it because I love my best friend's salad dressing that much.

Okay. When no one is looking, I have been known to:

Pick my teeth in the car with a matchbook cover.

Drink tangerine juice directly out of the carton, which, even though I know no one drinks it but me, is still tacky as shit.

Rinse a dozen ants off the butter and put it back in the refrigerator.

Throw dirty laundry in the closet when someone comes over. (Okay, not for years, but only because the closet is too full.)

Surreptitiously sniff milk before pouring it, not only in MY home but in other people's (I HATE outdated milk)

Dump blue cheese dressing on my pizza.

Brush my hair at the dinner table.

Eat half a See's chocolate and put it back in the box to finish later.

Drop food on the floor and pick it up and put it on my kids' plates anyway.

Rummage through the loaf of bread to get to the softer middle slice for myself.

Taste soup off the stirring spoon and USE THE SPOON AGAIN AFTERWARDS.

So you see - I have no mannerly leg to stand on, none at all. Mop that juice, go on. I Officially Retract the plate-mopping observation.

I'm standing by the stupid Afghanistan Statement, though.

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