So, turns out I'm not crazy

Well, I still may be, but not in a way I had previously thought I was. A commenter to Asymmetrical Information's post on pornography (I'm not the adrian in the comments, fyi; I do have a ridiculously long essay on women and pornography that I may be posting soon, though, so brace yourselves) leads me to this great post by Kim du Toit, which in turn leads me to this insightful contribution, by Mrs. du Toit. This post, however, isn't about any of that war of the sexes discussion at all. It's about a story Mrs. du Toit tells in the comments to her post (comment 20, no link, sorry). She talks about a rule of etiquette which stipulates that "you’d never take a bite of something because your teeth would show. You always had to break it or cut it so that it fit in your mouth without having your teeth show." Specifically, that you never butter a whole roll, that you butter it piece by mouth-manageable piece.

I cannot tell you how relieved I am to read that. My mother drilled that rule into me from infancy, and I have literally never met anyone outside of my family who has ever heard of it. I have never, ever seen anyone besides her or myself ever adhere to it. I was beginning to suspect that she may be nuts, or perhaps the incredibly gullible victim of some mischievous manners maven many a year ago. Now I know, thanks to Mrs. du Toit, that the rule does exist, and that I've just been living among swine all these years. What a relief! (well, maybe not, come to think of it...)

I swear I'm not really a snob about these things. My favorite etiquette story, an old standard of my father's, is about a dinner held by the Queen (no, I don't know which Queen), in honor of an exotic, faraway ruler. This man was, quite understandably, completely unschooled in the ways of the English upper classes. So, faced with an unfamiliar little bowl of water placed before him, he did not know he was meant to wash his fingers in it; instead, he drank it. The whole table, full of nobility and other dignitaries, gasped and smirked at this primitive display. The whole table, that is, except for the Queen. For he was her guest, and she knew that, while it may be rude to drink from a finger bowl, it is infinitely more rude to belittle one's guests. So, she took her own finger bowl, brought it to her lips, and drank it.

Manners are important, but sometimes a blatant violation of etiquette can be the classiest act in the room.

UPDATE: A quick googling (I should really try doing those before I write my posts!) reveals that the monarch in question was Queen Victoria.

Further adventures in shopping and sociology

After buying a card, I went to go rent some movies (final tally: The Talk of the Town, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Days of Heaven). There was a man there, a Ron Howard type in his fifties, with his son, who couldn't have been more than seven. The father was super-excited about showing his son some movies (he was shouting to the clerk from across the room about initiating his son into this shared wonder). The movies at hand, you ask? The Star Wars prequels.

I don't share Udolpho's hatred of fanboy geek types. I like Star Trek and Firefly and LOTR, and Star Wars, too. But I'm not kidding myself about their quality. Nothing more than cheap, fun escapism. After working really hard for a few months, I come home, sink into to the couch for a long weekend, turn off my brain, and watch some CSI or a Bond marathon. The thing is, though, that I'm fully aware at those moments that I'm indulging in stupid, mindless laziness. What bothers me is that a lot of people, such as the father I saw, seem to view these works as modern works of genius, as life-defining classics. They scarf down cheeseburgers and think they're dining on steak.

I strongly believe that kids will live down to your expectations. If you treat them like idiots, they'll become idiots. Throw stupid scifi movies (or, even worse, today's filthy, flatulence-obsessed 'children's movies') at them, and they will undoubtedly enjoy them, and they'll grow up to be dumb, crass, and blind to beauty. But show them some true classics, read them the great books, and you might be surprised at how much they understand and appreciate.

As Joseph Bottum (a name fit for a modern kids' movie, come to think of it) put it in Commentary a few years ago, "Certainly the hungry child will find too many of today’s standards awfully thin gruel. It is worth remembering that Dickens’s reading list for the eight- or nine-year-old David Copperfield includes Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote—any one of which would make a well-qualified recommender of children’s books these days fall to the ground in a Victorian swoon. As Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 Little Women opens, the March girls have just read Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, which is not a title likely to be mentioned in children’s bibliographies any longer."

Parents: your kids aren't dumb until you dumb them down. Let them discover the Star Wars prequels for themselves once they're in their teens (but pray they never do). As long as they're under your control, though, make the most of it and shove the classics down their throats. Even if they don't like it (I maintain that they will), they'll at least know what a good book or movie looks like, what true culture and class feels like, and hopefully won't grow up to pour ketchup on their steaks.