During my formative years, I cannot count how many times my mother looked around the dinner table at me and my younger brother and then covered her eyes with her hand and sighed in despair. As yet another napkin ring rocketed across the table, she would mutter, “I give up,” only to hear her words drowned out by one of my brother’s bravura window-rattling belches. “I have tried to teach the two of you manners,” she would continue, struggling to make herself heard over a volley of armpit farting, “but I give up.” Then she would stare accusingly at my father, who tried very hard to look stern and unamused, and push my brother’s elbow off the table for the tenth time that evening.

Well, I don’t think my mother failed in her quest to tame the flatulence-addicted savages in her charge, but it depends on the definition of “manners.” If we interpret “manners” as “not behaving crassly,” then admittedly, my brother and I could still use some work; I mean, we have actually run out to our front porch when we felt farts coming on, not because we wanted to spare the innocent but because the chairs out there maximize the reverb. But if we interpret “manners” as “showing consideration for others,” we actually do pretty well; we wait our turn in lines, we hold doors open for people behind us, and we don’t litter. I find this distinction crucial. I can deal with garden variety, wedgie-picking, chewing-with-mouth-open rudeness, but inconsiderate rudeness really stomps on my last nerve with a golf shoe on, because if I make the extra effort, I expect others to do the same.

For example, I expect dog owners to respect the laws of New York City. If your dog makes a deposit, pick it up and throw it away. I don’t want to look at it, I don’t want to smell it, and I don’t want to step in it. I hate stepping in dog poo because I inevitably nail it full-on, while wearing a pair of shoes with complicated soles, on my way to an interview, and after an unsuccessful attempt to find a twig and dig the poo out of the little cross-hatches and crevices, I wind up in some editor’s office, fanning the air frantically with my writing clips and valiantly pretending that I don’t smell a thing. I don’t envy dog owners, trooping around the block behind Fifi in all kinds of weather, plastic baggies in their pockets, waiting for the yapping furball to make a doody, but if they can’t handle the responsibility of disposal – or if they consider it beneath them – then perhaps they should consider a switch to tropical fish.

People also need to learn how to walk. Mayor Giuliani has gone a little overboard with some of his quality-of-life initiatives, but I would have no objection to his instituting two separate lanes on the sidewalk – one lane for everyone walking slowly, walking while holding hands, walking in a big old freshman-in-high-school flying wedge formation with a dozen other people, walking while talking on a cell phone, walking while trying to light a cigarette, walking while digging for something in the bottom of a purse, walking at a Southern-fried saunter while gossiping with a friend, or walking with the intention of stopping directly in front of me; and another faster lane for me and everyone else who doesn’t think the world revolves around them. I beg of you, people – pay some attention to your surroundings. Some of us would like to reach our destinations before the millennium. The same goes for driving – do yourself and the rest of us a favor, and don’t honk your horn unless you need to alert other drivers to a danger. (Hint: your bad self doesn’t qualify.) Adding unnecessary decibels to the atmosphere will do absolutely nothing to change traffic patterns. And don’t cause gridlock, either, because other people react to it byÖhonking. I know traffic blows, and I get frustrated too, but if you choose to plunge into a Manhattan rush hour with your own automobile, suck it up and get a book on tape.

I find lateness rude as well. I realize that trains get delayed and clothing rips unexpectedly, and if someone turns up a little late once in a while, I can live with it. But I seem to have inherited the gene of ruthless promptness from my mother, who always showed up to pick me up from birthday parties precisely at the time given on the invitation, and when others can’t bring themselves to get someplace on time, I get annoyed. Chronic lateness shows a lack of respect for my time, and if you can’t get there punctually, at least try to call. Seven o’clock means seven o’clock. (That goes for the doctors and dentists of the world, too. If I make an appointment for two o’clock, I do not want to cool my heels in the waiting room until three-fifteen reading magazines and then sit around in the examining room for another half-hour making sculptures out of Q-Tips. Don’t think you can disrupt my whole day just because my health-care plan only makes me pay you ten bucks – if you have too many patients to see them all on time, refer them elsewhere. I have filed complaints over less.)

And then, we have the other end of the spectrum – folks in a hurry who think they have the right to trample everyone else. Let me off the subway BEFORE you try to get on. Let me off the elevator BEFORE you try to get on. Save the pushing and elbowing for that touch football game at the Kennedy compound, fat boy – if you merited that much importance, you wouldn’t have to take public transportation, so learn the words “excuse me” and start using them now. And for god’s sweet sake – if you miss this train, they will send another one, and another one after that. They have more than one train, you see. Thus, you have no reason to hold the doors and delay everyone else on their way to work. So, when the conductor tells you to let go of the doors, LET GO OF THE DAMN DOORS.

And don’t get me started on telephone etiquette. People in movie theaters and restaurants who can’t bear to turn off their cell phones and beepers really need to limber up and get over themselves. If you must take a call on your cell phone, at least have the courtesy to leave the room, but don’t subject everyone else around you to the inanities of your side of the conversation. (I have a confession to make. I have a cell phone, and one time I forgot that I had left it on, and in the middle of a movie it started beeping to tell me that the battery had run low, and the Biscuit and I spent five minutes glaring at everyone else in the theater before realizing that my bag contained the annoying beeping, and I had to sneak out into the lobby and deal with it and then slink back into the theater, and I have never felt so mortified in my life, especially after my endless bitching about people making and taking calls at the movies. Oops – color me hypocritical, I guess, but it still gets on my nerves when other people do it.) Also, don’t leave me hanging on call-waiting for longer than sixty seconds or I will hang up. I don’t care if you need to take the call, but at least click over and tell me so that I can turn the volume on the TV back on.

Finally, say things like “please” and “thank you.” Nobody ever confused me with Little Miss Merry Sunshine, but the old adage that honey draws more flies than vinegar makes a lot of sense. I try to stay polite until the last possible moment, and while I won’t hesitate to start bitching and yelling, I have to say that I don’t get nearly the results with the volcano approach that I do making nice. I really appreciate it when other people make that effort for me, too – when they tell me to have a nice day or hold a door for me when I have my hands full. It restores my faith in my fellow human beings.

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