Table Manners As Taught To Me By Uncle Rudy

[mrissa]

1. When drinking something through a straw, you are allowed to slurp three times. If you slurp more than three times, you are totally uncouth and rude. Three or under, you're golden.

1a. These slurps can be as long as your lung capacity and/or ability to circular breathe can make them. It is the number, not the length of time slurping, that is key here.

2. If someone asks for you to pass a dish of something at a meal, and you want that thing as well, you may call out, "Shortstop!" and take some for yourself as it passes.

2a. It is rude to shortstop something if there's only one person's worth left.

2b. Negotiations about splitting the last piece of whatever are permissible if handled without acrimony.

3. Towards the end of a holiday meal, the appropriate comment is, "Well, I wonder what the poor folks are doing." If this comment has not been made, preferably by an elder, do not ask to be excused; the meal is not yet over.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The appropriate response is a small pause and then going on with one's meal/conversation.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Like Timprov, I think it would be very hard for me to let a statement like that go unremarked -- I don't know if that's my West Coast upbringing or my commie sympathies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Errm. Timprov is referring to Camelot, not Das Kapital.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I lose at reference-getting. I shall slap myself with a rubber fish.

[moiread]

I don't think timprov means what you think he means.