DEAR MISS MANNERS: Could you please provide me with a kind way to respond when someone I am having lunch with in a restaurant asks me to join in a blessing before eating?<\/p>\n
I would like to say something like, \u201cI\u2019d prefer not to, but I\u2019m happy to wait for you to do so.\u201d I don\u2019t want to provoke a confrontation or have to defend my preference.<\/p>\n
Sometimes this is with another female friend, who wants to hold hands while she prays aloud, but lately my teenage grandson has also begun this praying-in-public habit. He doesn\u2019t do the hand-holding thing, but he is Catholic and does the cross afterwards.<\/p>\n
I find it rather horrifying, frankly, but I would never hurt his feelings for any reason, and also do not want to upset him if he needs the comfort of faith.<\/p>\n
GENTLE READER: You simply say, \u201cI would be happy to,\u201d and then sit silently with your hands on your lap while your friend performs their ritual.<\/p>\n
To Miss Manners\u2019 thinking, this is more than merely avoiding a fight: It is the most profound form of respect. Actively participating, and thus pretending to be a member of another religion, is disrespectful not only to your own faith (if applicable), but to your friend\u2019s \u2014 whether they see it that way or not.<\/p>\n
DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend of mine is running for a local political office. I am very supportive, and have donated both time and money to her campaign. However, I\u2019ve now been invited to four different fundraisers for her.<\/p>\n
I would be glad to attend without donating additional money, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be possible. The fundraisers don\u2019t allow me to RSVP without either buying a ticket or donating a certain amount. It\u2019s very off-putting.<\/p>\n
I hate to be rude, but should I simply not RSVP to these events?<\/p>\n
GENTLE READER: If your friend wins the election, Miss Manners trusts you were not planning to call her at home on a Saturday to get preferential treatment in clearing the snow from the street in front of your house.<\/p>\n
Even if the candidate has fallen into the bad habit of dressing up fundraisers with the vocabulary of social events, this is the same problem from a different angle: There is your friend, and then there is your representative, and it is time to separate the two. An event to which you have to buy a ticket is not a personal invitation and does not require you to send your regrets if you are unable to attend.<\/p>\n
DEAR MISS MANNERS: My partner keeps shoving his dirty dishes at me at the dinner table, often when I am still eating.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve asked him, nicely, not to do that, saying that if the plates, etc., are in his way, he can just set them aside and I will clear them later. But he keeps doing it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tried setting them back or away from me, but he thinks it\u2019s amusing to shove them right back at me.<\/p>\n
GENTLE READER: Suggest that your partner clear the dishes himself.<\/p>\n
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, gentlereader@missmanners.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEAR MISS MANNERS: Could you please provide me with a kind way to respond when someone I am…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8345,114,40330,139,141,140,109,106],"class_list":["post-429021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-advice","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miss-manners","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}