My family mostly taught me good manners, I think, but there are a couple of gaps that I had to rectify on my own in adulthood.
One is writing thank-you notes. When I moved far away from home, and subsequently ended up getting most of my presents in the mail, I felt bad about not being able to thank the giver in person, so I began the practice of writing a note (and more often, a whole letter.) It was a while later that I realized that that is supposed to be the way you do it. It’s not just me–no one in my family writes thank-you notes, so mine are always one-way, wich doesn’t bug me, as I was not raised to feel righteous indignation about it.
Another thing my mother didn’t teach me is how to respond to, “How are you?” The correct answer is, “Fine, thanks, and you?” or something along those lines. Note that the description of one’s own condition is always brief, mild, and positive, and immediately followed by an expression of gratitude and a reciprocal inquiry. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that my family bonds through complaining, so it took me a long time to realize that, outside my clan, “How are you?” isn’t usually a sincere request for information. I still forget sometimes and launch into a litany of everything that’s wrong with my life and/or forget to ask the other person how they are.
My parents never taught me the correct way to set a table, or the rules about passing and such. It’s still an embarrassment to me, as I can never remember how the place setting goes without going to look in one of my cookbooks. When my MIL or someone asks me to set the table at their house, I cringe.
There were actually a whole slew of things I was “deficient” in, I found, when I went to college. I grew up in a very informal family in the Midwest. I went to college in the South, and found I was a lot less polished than my classmates, in speech, manners, and etiquette. I am sure that I would have groaned and griped at the time, but I do wish my parents had drilled more of that stuff into me in childhood.
I read this in a humor column, but it is true manners:
"Businessmen never mean their greeting literally- they will usually just repeat the other’s greeting and all are satisfied. ‘How are you?’ is replied with ‘How are you’, ‘Looking good’ with ‘Looking good’, coming in from rain ‘Ain’t it a bitch!’ with ‘Ain’t it a bitch!’ "
My parents claim that my brother and I were never taught manners, we just picked them up. Which makes sense since our father was a raging tyrant , so to avoid punishment we had to learn not to mess up.
My parents didn’t really teach me tact. My family was loud, opinionated and direct. We thought it, we said it. Some embarrassing situations in elementary school, taught me a bit about tact. But social tact is still a work in progress for me. As Cordelia once said “Tact is just not saying true stuff.”
I don’t know where I picked up the common courtesy of holding the door for someone who’s entering or exiting a building behind me, but my mother doesn’t even notice–she’ll let the door slam right in the face of a person with a stroller, a diaper bag, eight shopping bags and a handful of half-eaten cotton candy, without so much as a backwards glance. When I call her on it (as I’m tripping over her to catch the door for the person behind), she’ll usually say something along the lines of, “Mmmph” and keep on walking.
My parents never told me you were supposed to tip the pizza delivery guy! I was in college before I figured out you were supposed to tip people like the pizza delivery guy and the hairstylist.
(It’s not manners, but they also never told me about rotating car tires. I drove my college car for three years without having the tires rotated.)
My parents never taught me to write thank-you notes. Well, they tried to retroactively teach me at about 15, but I’m still no good at it.
They also didn’t teach me not to read over people’s shoulders. I can usually restrain the urge by now, but I got a lot of evil eyes when I was growing up.
My mom never told me not to fart out in public and then when I was around 10 she got all mad because I did it. There were several things that weren’t exactly manners issues, but more hygiene issues she neglected to share with me as well, such as washing hands after using the bathroom.
