Discovering That Manners Class Doesn’t Measure Up

If you’ve ever wondered how to hold a wine glass (by the stem) or why knives go on the right side of the plate rather than the left (or is it the other way ‘round?), then this was the class for you.

Marian Fifi Locke--Divisional Tablesetting Champion of the Santa Barbara County Fair and Expo--was holding forth at a youth etiquette workshop. The class, held at the North Hills branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, was filled with the young Martha and Martin Stewarts of the future, sitting sullen and subdued next to their hopeful parents.

Fifi, 37, perhaps Southern California’s most accomplished table-setter, spreads the gospel of manners, she says, to help edify teen mothers, to burnish the rough edges of poverty, and to eradicate poor posture.

In the middle of her discourse on proper plate and silver “alignment,” Fifi spotted the curved spines of two slouching pupils.

“Are you guys bored?” she asks, shaming them awake.

“No,” the boys answer timidly.

“Then you want to sit in your chairs correctly please.”

Up they rise, and civilization rises with them.

I have never been much of a fan of table manners--mainly because I’ve never had any.

I don’t know a salad plate from a bread plate. A custard dish might as well be a cereal bowl for all I care. I’m the kind of fellow who will stir coffee with the soup spoon. I mean it all ends up in the same place, right?

My manners have deteriorated further since becoming a father. My wife and I are the parents of a 3-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy. They think food is a fashion statement.

When Fifi warned, “Never place food on a table runner,” I had flashbacks of my son in his sagging diaper doing the hop-skip-and-jump over the butter dish . . . er, the coffee coaster. When my daughter finishes dinner, she belches--and titters. We find this charming.

Fifi would have a fit at my dinner table.

“If you want to have a candle-lit dinner, please eat after 6 o’clock,” she counsels gravely. “You’ve never heard of a romantic candle-lit breakfast, have you?”

Oh, my word! Candles? She must be trying to get us killed.

I can see it now. My son and daughter leaping onto the table, snatching the candles like little Olympic torches and firing up their Beanie Babies (which also are constant guests at our dinner table.)

Table manners are fading about as quickly as barn dancing around here.

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I mean, who needs place-setting in Los Angeles--what with 50 drive-thrus per city block? Fifi would be better off laying a dashboard than a dining table. Once, I ate a full course turkey dinner while driving home in my car--I steered with my knees.

When one can order meals from the World Wide Web in one’s underwear, etiquette sort of falls by the wayside.

I’m sure many disagree with this view, but come on, let’s face it. How many of us really know which fork to use during those rare outings to classy restaurants--Denny’s for instance?

Sunita Misra, 45, says she does.

The Granada Hills mom brought her four children to the etiquette class in the hope that Fifi would impart knowledge Misra learned in India’s British-style home economics classes.

“I learned this in seventh grade,” says Misra, who has put up with our ugly American ways for almost two decades.

Her 10-year-old daughter, Abha, says the most important thing she learned in the class is to never, ever use plastic eating utensils with china.

But when her mother walks away, Abha fesses up: “It’s not that important,” she whispers. “I mean, there are other things to think about.”

Don’t tell that to Fifi.

A perfume saleswoman and free-lance window-dresser, Fifi graduated from charm school in her hometown of Gary, Ind., and now travels the county fair circuit where she regularly wows Emily Post wannabes with her place-setting prowess. Along with her assortment of fine plastic ware and designer paper napkins was a scrapbook of her recent themed table-setting victories.

There is the tourist-themed “Vacation Fun Time” setting featuring picnic baskets, a miniature Statue of Liberty and a three-dimensional shadow-box of Mt. Rushmore--”I won first place for that, of course,” boasts Fifi. She also had a picture of “Romantic Dinner,” a frilly, mauve setting accented with lace, paper mache food and enough candles for a Malibu wildfire.

Such place settings give a table “attitude,” she says, and who could argue with her?

The first-place winner of Fifi’s youth etiquette class is 13-year-old Ben Bradbury, who won a McDonald’s gift certificate for his trouble. (If you happen to be in the area, little Ben will be easily recognized--he’s the one eating Chicken McNuggets with a fork.)

Ben plans to teach his mother a thing or two.

“She just knows the basics, where the knife and spoon go,” he says. “She probably doesn’t know how to set the main dishes--that’s crucial.”

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Other crucial advisories were delivered in Fifi’s “Dos & Don’ts for Everyday Table Manners and Settings” handout--a guide for budding sophisticates.

“Do use the flatware farthest from the plate first,” admonishes Fifi. “Don’t pick your teeth/nose or apply makeup/lipstick at the table.”

At Fifi’s insistence, even I attempt to set a table using the paper plates, plastic ware and a ruler she provides.

I even fold my napkin into a pyramid and set it atop my plate, giving it “attitude” and avoiding major infractions like placing plastic ware on my napkin.

Fifi, however, finds my cup was “out of alignment.”

OK, but how polite is it to measure someone’s place setting with a ruler?