EMILY POST ....Who?

Emily Post is famous for writing a book of rules about what is right and what is wrong from the standpoint of etiquette. She has dictated to generations of people rules about wedding invitations, thank you notes, bringing a gift when visiting a friend's home, and the like. I am not very conscious of these things but fortunately my wife, The Kitty, and my daughter are up to speed on these things. For my part, I have an almost pathological resistance to rules like these and have frequently told the following joke…”Why do Junior Leaguers dislike Orgies? All those thank-you notes to write.”

I am aware of the reasons behind Emily Post. It was not just about doing the socially correct thing, it was about taking a moment to consider the feelings of others regardless of how busy you are. Emily codified this by implying that you were an uncivilized clod if you did not immediately and forthwith send a thank you note for a gift received, for example, a wedding present. With the casual nature of the internet today where “I” isn’t even capitalized (as if we were all little e.e. cumming clones) and it is considered an imposition to have to open and read a “thank-you” reply and of course Txtng, I mean texting… it won’t be long before we eliminate all niceties from our lives.

Does this mean that we will also be eliminating caring about the feelings of others? Folks who may or may not have spent time picking out your present, in person, with an eye toward what they think you would like rather than something from the first table they reach at Home Goods? Or, more likely, a REGIFT from their “gift closet”? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way things are today. I go into the bank and the teller, who looks like a high school junior, calls me not Mister or Doctor but simply... Phil. I spend time selecting a gift for a hypothetical friend who loves Ferraris by not just going to Macy’s for a tie but running by the Ferrari dealership when I am in Miami to get a Red hat or an auto related trinket, whatever. Meanwhile my hypothetical friend might get me a CD of Barbra Streisand’s Greatest Hits. WTF? I know a lot about fashion, and window treatments but I am not really Gay. How am I supposed to react when it is painfully apparent that No thought went into a gift I was given? One of my favorite gifts of all time, other than from my Aunt Mae (future blog) was a pewter Volkswagen Beetle model that my friend gave me for my birthday. It is prominently displayed on my library shelf and I have made provisions for it in my will. Class will tell.

Finally, I write this BLOG. After I write it, I link it to many of my e-mail contacts so that they might read it and perhaps, drop me a short line in an e-mail or text, saying “You can’t write, give it up.” Or, “I loved the one about the frog.” Anything. But, alas, I guess this is a subject that is not covered in Emily Post. Maybe I should quit the blog business and write a book entitled “A Guide to Etiquette in the Internet Age.” I fear that it would not be a great seller, which reminds me of the story about the man who said “I was going to buy the book The Power of Positive Thinking, but then I said to myself, What good would that do?”