“Excellent dinner.  Thank you,” she says with a smile to the woman sitting across from her.  The woman nods as she swallows before saying, “You’re very welcome.  Any time.”  As the young girl’s boyfriend, the woman’s son, stands and moves to another room of the house, the young girl joins him, making herself at home on the couch beside him just as she was instructed to do by his mother when she walked in the door just before dinner.

It is only a little while later, as the young girl gets up to use the bathroom that she overhears her boyfriend’s mother on the phone in a room adjacent to the bathroom.  “…and she just said ‘thank you’ and got up from the table to go watch TV with him, leaving me to do all the clean up by myself.  Seriously, I’d just cooked her a big dinner and after ‘thank you’ she leaves the rest to me, never mind that she was here before I was done cooking it and not once offered to help with that, either.  And I’ve never seen someone eat so much!  You’d think she was a starving child from Africa or something!  What a pig.”

The girl’s heart sank and tears welled in her eyes.  Hurriedly, she closed the bathroom door and turned on the sink faucet so that no one outside the room would hear her break down and cry.  She hadn’t known she was to help or she would have been too happy to pitch in!  Whenever someone in her family wanted help with clean up, they requested it, and those her age, her cousins and such, were often told not to be found underfoot and to go somewhere else, to “get out of the way.”  As for her stuffing herself, she’d been taught to clean her plate as a child, especially at the home of a guest.  It was insulting to the cook to leave food, or so she’d been told.  When his mother kept spooning more onto her plate, saying “there’s plenty more where that came from,” she’d wanted to say no thanks and not eat it, but really, she hadn’t wanted to be rude.  She’d left the table so stuffed that she honestly was afraid she’d vomit.  Now, she’d upset his mom and made a bad impression, the last thing she wanted to do.  Who knows who was on the other end of the phone that now knew she was a hopeless social klutz?  And how would she get them both to understand, even if she could find out who his mother had been talking to, that she hadn’t intended to offend anyone, that it was just a matter of growing up to different teachings of etiquette?  She couldn’t very well march out there and explain herself, or his mom would add eavesdropping to her list of transgressions.

Drying her face with Kleenex, the young girl decided that next time, she’d be more prepared, that she’d not make the same mistake twice and she would prove she wasn’t a pig who was too lazy to do her share.

The rest of the evening, she jumped up every time his mother entered the room, thanking her again and again for the wonderful meal and for her hospitality, asking if there was anything she could do.  She even offered to go for dessert, even though she only had $15 to last her the rest of the week until payday, but her offer was graciously refused.  His mother never let on that she’d been offended, telling the young girl to relax and just make herself at home…

**********************

When someone, say a friend or a non-family member, invites you over for dinner, do you bring something, like a side dish even if you don’t know how well it’ll go with the main course or maybe a bottle of wine?  Do you offer to help with clean up?

When you were a kid and your mom came home with the groceries, did you go outside and help her bring in the bags from the trunk?  Did you wait until she brought them in and then help her put them away?  Did you paw through what she bought and complain that there wasn’t enough good stuff?

If a friend, let’s assume a fairly close one, asks you to help them move, do you help them without hesitation or do you tell them you’ll check your schedule and hope you have plans already?

What about birthdays?  Do you get everyone a card when you know their birthday, friends and family members alike?

These are things I truly didn’t know when I moved out on my own, the threshold of time when I assume people know stuff like this.   I’ve had to learn them, one way or another, since I met Mike.  One way or another often meant that I dropped the ball and only learned my faux pas after being the subject of a couple rants, though the girl in the above story is not me.  I have often felt the way she did, though, as though I just hadn’t known my social klutziness until it was thrust back at me.  Sometimes I overheard things people said about me, things I’d not done that I should have that upset others who hadn’t come to me and said they were annoyed.  Sometimes, a well-meaning friend would tell me what they’d discussed with another upset individual.  Other times, I caught the tail end of a dirty look thrown my way.  I even had “helpful suggestions” made to me through third parties so that I would be aware of the faux pas I’d committed and could rectify it the next time I was in a social situation.  Mind you, all these instances were over time, from different groups of people, many of whom had nothing to do with each other.

Now, I’m hypersensitive to the things I say and the way I behave.  I often wonder actually if I’d have a better relationship with some of the members of Mike’s family if I wasn’t such a dope when he and I were first dating, but the things I missed weren’t things I was taught.  When I was growing up, my parents didn’t go to friends’ houses for dinner parties, so I have no idea if you bring something or help clean up.  Some people appreciate the help and some are insulted at the offer as it encroaches upon their hospitality.  At holiday gatherings in my family, the same people did the cooking and the cleaning up after and honestly, it never occurred to me to roll up my sleeves and pitch in because I really would be “in the way.”  Sure, I had to do dishes when I was younger as one of my routine chores, but never at someone else’s house when I’d been invited over.  I knew to say thank you for dinner and for the invitation, but beyond that, I was clueless.

Mike is a social butterfly.  He might take exception to being compared to a butterfly, but sometimes, especially when the gathering is at our house, he lights upon the groups of people like a butterfly, making sure everyone is comfortable and having a good time.  He is the consummate host.  In fact, I rarely see him, so busy is he making the rounds.  So it’s not surprising that when he and I were dating and we gathered at someone’s house, I often looked dumb for saying/doing something stupid or not doing the right thing.  Nor is it surprising that I have developed a complex over etiquette.  Being the subject of scorn because I didn’t jump up to help right away when someone was carrying something heavy or I didn’t manage to get into the kitchen for clean up before the last dish was put away is not something I relish.  I’ve been there, overheard snark about my perceived laziness, and despite telling myself I shouldn’t be so sensitive, I do try to keep repeat performances to a minimum.

Mostly I’m curious.  Are there things you feel obligated to do/not do when you’re invited to a friend’s house?  A family member’s house?  Are the rules different between the two?  When you are the host, what are your expectations?  What gets your goat about etiquette, be it something you think is a stupid manners rule or something you wish people would do more of?  Have you ever been on the receiving end of bad etiquette from friends/family?  Have you ever (accidentally or otherwise) been on the giving end of bad etiquette?

I’d like to know.  Hopefully I’m not the only one out there who didn’t know all the rules and learned some of them the hard way.  Not that I want someone to go through that, but it would mean I’m not alone in my social klutziness.