A lesson in Miss Manners

Most of the time I feel like J is the one who is pretty old school the two of us (though admittedly, I'm pretty old fashioned, too, in a lot of ways). But then he goes and shows me how backwards he is, like our coversation last night. And I'm totally calling him backwards out of love here.

I have a small pile of invitations to Mr. Baby B's first birthday (How is that soooo soon?) sitting on my desk. Most of them have been mailed out, but there are a few people I currently lack current addresses for. I said to J, "I feel so bad that these haven't been mailed. His birthday is in two weeks!"

And J looked through them and then said, "Well, all of these people live out of state. They can't come anyway. Why are you even inviting them?"

I wanted to ask him if he lived under a box. If he'd never looked before and realized where all the invitations were going for Miss H's parties when he mailed them out. But I didn't. Instead I said, "You're supposed to invite everyone who you'd like to attend. Even if you know they cannot. That way they know that you are thinking of them and that you would like them there."

"That's just going to make them feel bad because they can't be."

Okay, so I admit, at this, I rolled my eyes. "No, it's not. It makes them feel loved."

"That doesn't make sense," he grumbled. "But do your thing, and I'll support it."

"Haven't you ever read Miss Manners? How do you not know these things?!"

"Is Miss Manners real?"

My eyes may have bulged out of my head here. "Um, yes. How do you not know this? Oh. My. Goodness. How did you survive before me?"

"You know, no one got thank you cards or Christmas cards before we were married. I never heard a complaint. I managed."

"But you have to have proper manners, J! You send courtesy invitations and thank you notes for any gift you recieve that the gift-giver didn't hand to you personally. You have to know this stuff. What if I die tomorrow? Our kids have to grow up knowing this stuff!"

"Well, I know now," he assurred me. "And you're not going to die tomorrow. But if you do, I'll send everyone a courtesy invitation to your funeral and a thank you card for the flowers."

"You might want to check with Miss Manners on that one."