#Gentle reader emily post how to#

My domestic failings aside, this was national TV, I needed to sell my book, I See Rude People, and I had a classy friend I could hit up for remedial table-setting and turkey-serving lessons. (Some men fantasize about kinky things to do in bed he just wants to dine on a flat surface before we're fed through tubes at The Home.) When my boyfriend makes me dinner, we eat balancing our plates on our legs while sitting on my couch. My dining room table is piled with books and papers.

I do have a grasp on certain table manners basics, like that you shouldn't lick your plate clean unless there's a power outage or you're dining with the blind, but I'm basically about as domestic as a golden retriever. 'Fantastic!' I lied-same as I would've if she'd asked me to come on national TV and stick my head up a horse's ass to look for lost watches.

#Gentle reader emily post how to#

'How to set it and how to properly serve the turkey.' She had seen me in a thirty-second bit about civility on the Today show, loved that I wasn't the typical fusty etiquette expert, and-wow-wanted me to fly to New York to be the featured expert in a segment on 'manners and civility at the holidays.'

I don't know the correct way to introduce an ambassador or address a wedding invite to a divorcée, and I'm not sure where to put the water glasses, other than 'on the table.' I kept this to myself when I got a call from a TV producer from one of the national morning shows. This is not an etiquette book, filled with prissy codes of conduct to help you fit in to upper-class society (or at least passably fake it), and I am nobody's idea of an etiquette auntie. (as long as you don't stab anybody in the eye with it)