Manners

I saw something on TV last week that, despite the fact that it was mindless, daytime-TV filler garbage, irritated me to no end. One of the morning shows invited some lady on to discuss etiquette and table manners, etc. After spending quite some time talking about the precise angle at which your knife and fork should be placed (and the orientation of each implement in terms of upside down or right way up) on your plate when you have finished your meal, she went on to discuss more important things. Like how the correct reply to the greeting "How do you do?" is not "Fine thank you," but instead is "How do you do?" or "Nice to meet you". She explained that "How do you do?" actually means "Nice to meet you" and that it was inappropriate to reply as if you had been asked "How are you?"

First of all, I think manners are incredibly important; they are a way of conveying respect to people and I'm really big on that. What irritated me about this particular 'lesson' was that everything seemed entirely irrelevant to modern society. Does it matter if you eat your main course with a salad fork? Or if you reply "I'm fine thank you," when someone greets you with "How do you do?" When was the last time anyone even used that phrase when not addressing the Queen? I mean, when people greet you with "How are you?" or "How you going?" they're not actually asking how you are, it's just a greeting people use instead of just saying "hello". That someone would be so pedantic about such trivial things infuriated me (yes, I know it's a little hypocritical to say that given how trivial many of my musings are but I'm still going to say it). Why should this sort of information be widely distributed when the vast majority of people are ignorant of far more important issues?

Perhaps I was just having a bad day.