#642 Variety of Propriety

It’s funny how a little difference in perspective can change everything.
Take eating.
It is now considered appropriate by Emily Post for one to eat chicken with one’s hands at a social gathering. Emily Post, of course, is long dead, but some corporate entity—or possibly Abigail Van Buren’s daughter, is now carrying on her post mortem pronouncements.
Actually, it depends on the chicken. If one were to grab a portion of chicken cordon-bleu and stuff it into one’s mouth, or better yet, rip off a hunk with one’s exposed teeth, many in the etiquette business would quail visibly, go white as a starched sheet, and write a scathing letter in perfect cursive to Martha Stewart.
Cursive is the handwriting one uses when repressing a desire to use swear words. A variation on the frustration geeks felt in the earlier crash-prone days of computers, which ended up in the pointy thing that locked up and indicated a screen freeze being called a cursor.
In any event, manually handling food is not an option beyond certain types of bone-in chicken, like barbecued or fried.
However, the bone itself is not a license to gobble. Turkey legs are etiquettually forbidden, and tearing into a T-Bone it with one’s teeth is discouraged with an upturned nose as well.
Exposed teeth are generally frowned upon in the eating process, while smiling good-naturedly with them when the hostess plops corn-on-the-cob on your plate is okay.
Perhaps the tooth conundrum is at the heart of table manners. It is perfectly appropriate to stick a fork in one’s mouth—if one loads it with food and jams it completely inside. But it is not okay to use a fork to pick one’s teeth.
Arguably, your teeth are in your mouth and any cooties you are getting on your host’s fork are already present, so why you can’t wrestle some gristle loose from your teeth with that same fork is a mystery.
Perhaps I’ll jot a query to Miss Manners. Or perhaps ask my dentist when he has his entire hand in my mouth.
A difference in perspective can change everything.
America, ya gotta love it