[Leica] OT (kind of) Table manners

[marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)]

This has been a fascinating discussion.  I was 
raised in a subset of the Best and the Brightest 
but my family never did the country club 
thing.  I went through the proper school routine 
and the like and I had no idea of this social 
norm.  Hell, I waited tables at some decent 
restaurants.  And I certainly attended some 
high-class caviar-dips at Yale and the 
like.   But the social norms I picked up, I 
picked up by some sort of osmosis, and I missed this silverware trick.

Years go by, with my head buried in books.  Then 
I get married to my late wife, Susan, a victim of 
a Cleveland, Ohio, country-club upbringing, and 
she starts fussing at me over my failure to put 
the silverware at the ten-to-four position when I 
was finished.  I was aghast:  trust me, I was a 
LOT more attuned to the fineries of social gaffes 
than she was, having committed most of them 
regularly.  This was before the Internet, so I 
checked with a good friend who was then a 
Maitre'd at a decent restaurant, and he told me 
that I was wrong and that, yes, this WAS the 
convention.  Whoops!  Susan was right and I was 
wrong.  I did that most horrid thing a man can 
ever do, admit I was wrong (apologies to Red Green!).

We all learn.

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!