Notes on Etiquette

The outsider enters society by the same path, but it is steeper and longer because there is an outer gate of reputation called ‘They are not people of any position’ which is difficult to unlatch.

—Emily Post, “The Entrance of an Outsider,” Etiquette, 1922

WHEN I WAS five years old, my mom got a button that said “Welfare Bum.” I don’t think she ever actually wore it when she had to go to the welfare office and, as she put it, “beg.” I knew the button was supposed to be a joke, but I did not get it.

My favorite joke was: What’s green and sucks blood? A vampickle.

The procedure called zigzag eating is this: With knife in right hand and fork in left, the diner cuts a piece of meat. Then instead of lifting the piece to the mouth with fork in left hand—or at least cutting several pieces—the knife is at once laid down, the fork transferred to right hand, turned over, prongs up, and the piece of meat speared and conveyed to mouth… don’t let us even picture it.

—Emily Post, “Table Tricks that Must Be Corrected,” Etiquette, 1945

IT WAS a rare treat to be invited to New York to dine with Uncle Herman. He was the absentee father of my cousins Melissa and Nikki, but I wished he were my absentee father instead. Dinner was delicious, and I was gobbling away like a starving raccoon—pausing only to spell the word “antidisestablishmentarianism,” this being my hit number at age eight—when I became aware that Uncle Herman was watching me with concern.

“,” he said. “Don’t