Kids Feed on Table Manners

A quick etiquette quiz for the children:

In which direction does one move the soup spoon?

What do you do when you drop your fork at a fancy restaurant?

Is it ever appropriate to discuss bovine flatulence at the dining table?

The first one is a little tricky, I admit. The answer is to move the spoon away from you. At some point, however, you must be sure to bring it back.

The other answers are more straightforward. Leave the fork right there, until a poorly paid busperson, perhaps a refugee from a Third World country with a large family at home, squats painfully to retrieve it and then fetches you a new piece of silver.

As for No. 3, the answer is clear. One would never discuss this topic, except on those hilarious occasions when Dad does his bovine-flatulence routine, and then all bets are off.

If your child answered all three correctly, you’ve probably got the kind of kid who doesn’t put her elbows on the table, scream into the phone or stare at her shoes when meeting grown-ups.

If your child got one or more wrong, he or she is entirely normal, and might benefit from a class like “Modern Manners for Today.”

I sat in on the class’ debut at Ventura’s Pierpont Inn last Saturday, watching as children ages 8 through 12 were put through the paces of handshaking, writing thank-you notes, giving and receiving compliments, discerning the salad fork from the fish fork and more.

(NOTE TO KIDS: There is no such thing as a “salad spoon,” except in food fights, which are NEVER appropriate. Thank you.)

Modern Manners for Today is the brainchild of two Ventura women, Dianne Nicholas and Monica Rowe, who can be reached at https://www.nicholasandrowe.com. Taking up arms against a general decline in manners, they are starting classes for children, teenagers and even adults anxious about the possibility that they may one day be confronted with a finger bowl.

The pair’s next children’s class is June 25 at the Sunset Hills Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

At Saturday’s session, they fought the good fight, politely, for $125 per child.

“Settle down, class,” Nicholas would say calmly, ringing a hotel front-desk bell. She grew up in Kenya and has a lovely British accent, custom-made for speaking of manners with impeccable correctness.

“I’m aware that in California it’s acceptable social behavior to address grown-ups by their first names,” she tells the children. “But it’s important to learn that’s not the case in some other parts of the country and in Europe.”

A boy raises his hand.

“What do we call a girl who gets surgery and turns into a boy: Mister or Miss?”

“Call them whatever they wish to be called at the time.”

“But what if there’s someone who’s split down the middle, so he’s a man on the right and a woman on the left?”

Nicholas isn’t flustered, gamely soldiering on to the problem of how to address the president.

“Let’s say your class was in the foyer of the White House,” she says, “and President Clinton came down the stairs. What would your teacher say to him?”

“How could you!” hissed a girl politically wise beyond her years.

The kids stood in a circle and played games involving firm handshakes, good eye contact and proper introductions. They were missing the Saturday-morning cartoons, but for some reason almost everyone in etiquette class is the class clown, and most seemed to have a good time.

“Hi, I’m-uh-I forgot my name,” one girl said during the “Greetings and Introductions” game.

“Hi, I’m--well, just call me antidisestablishmentarianism,” said a smart kid, as if he were the only smart kid ever who could say it.

“Speak slowly and distinctly,” Nicholas reminded her charges.

A boy made a sound like the opening of a mummy’s casket: “Hi, I’m J-a-a-a-a-a-c-o-o-o-b,” he said.

Table manners were taught by Rowe.

“We don’t snap the dinner napkin around like a bullfighter,” she said. “We don’t unfold it until it’s at lap level. We don’t make it a big production.”

By day’s end, they knew the difference between sawing one’s meat and slicing it. They knew a little rhyme to remember the direction of the soup spoon: “Like ships that go--out to sea--I spoon my soup--away from me.”

They found out there’s a difference between the Continental and American styles of eating.

(In Europe, they keep the knife in the right hand while lifting morsels of meat with the left. At refined tables in the U.S., one does much fancy switching of utensils, as well as the customary shouting of “Yee-haw!” after the salad.)

After six hours, the children were ready to leave. They had enjoyed about as much politeness as they could stand.

But some nuggets may stick with both the kids and their teachers for quite some time.

“It takes 14 face muscles to smile and 72 to frown,” Nicholas said.

“Is there a proper way to frown?” a girl asked.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.