Dear Miss Manners: My husband greets everyone with a smiling, hearty “Good morning,” “Good afternoon” or “Good evening.” If the recipient does not repeat the same message in return, he says it again more emphatically.
This usually gets him the reply he wants, but if not he’ll say: “You’re not sure?”
The person will say: “What?”
He’ll say: “Whether or not it’s a good morning!”
At this time of the year, he does the same thing with “Merry Christmas.”
What can I do to make him stop doing this?
Dear Reader: You can’t lock him in the bathroom, Miss Manners supposes, as much of a benefit as that would be to society.
People who go around inflicting their tricky little tests on innocent people are a public menace, but as the danger they create is that they will be throttled, it is hard to make them understand the harm while others remain under control.
About all you can do is to busy yourself elsewhere. This is not so much to relieve you from embarrassment — each adult is responsible only for her own behavior, even if she is married — but to lessen the likelihood that the person who will throttle your husband will be you.
Dear Miss Manners: I would never dream of sending someone a Christmas card that was dirty or so old that it had turned yellow, or so cheap that it wasn’t much thicker than a regular piece of paper, but that’s what I got. Last year my mother received a Christmas card that was in worse shape than a card that I had saved from the early 1960s!
I really don’t want to offend these people by not sending them a card next year, but I don’t appreciate how little they apparently think of me! They have soured me on the tradition of sending cards altogether. How would you recommend that I handle things?
Dear Reader: With a modicum of jolly good will toward all. If Miss Manners is not mistaken, this is what Christmas cards — the ones you send, as well as the ones you receive — purport to convey.
Miss Manners appears Wednesdays. E-mail your etiquette questions to her at .
