When and who taught you table etiquette when you were a child?

We could but I'd have to use my bread plate for a shield and these special chopsticks:

I was taught little or nothing. What I know either came naturally or from watching others. My at home table manners are non existent. I eat from a spoon and frequently tear up meat with my fingers.

Since my parents grew up in quite bourgeois households, we were taught table-manners as far back as I can remember.
And as a child, I actually was quite interested in learning even the more complicated "technical details" like which spoons are used when for what etc

On the other hand, I liked to eat in the neighbourhood at friends' families, where you used the sleeve of your shirt as napkin, ellbow on the table and speaking with full mouth was the rule ...

Oh yeah, the sequence of the tools. If the table is properly set, start from the outside, and work in. The salad fork should be on the extreme edge of the setting, starting from the food in the center.

I was taught a great deal of table etiquette. I'm quite a boor on wheels now, but that fits my take on the fitness of behaviors relative to situations. More on that, which involves elbows.

As I've said on a2k, as an only child with parents who moved a lot, I hardly knew any other children at all (except for in class) until we moved to Evanston in the Chicago area a few days after I turned nine.

But I did get to know adults.

My mother was boston irish of the lace curtain variety, much of the lace curtain involving shame about her father reeling home drunk most days. He was a tailor, which makes me wonder about his stitching in retrospect. My mother's brother married a girl (they called them that then) who had taken elocution lessons, that part of the family appearances pattern. My mother was born in 1901, to give context.

My father's family didn't seem to have these gentility issues, but from a few old photographs I can tell they were well off for a while, his father a lawyer. I am supposing there was a money loss at some point (silver stocks?). My dad never mentioned etiquette, he was just present in a group and courteous with no show of it. He had been in med school when his mother got ill (diabetes, hmm), and one of the two brothers had to quit school and he was the younger. That's when he became a film cutter, late 1920's.

Together, with me as the kid, they had a lot of interesting people to our house to dinner.. deep sea diver, John Craig; the founder of the rosary crusade, Patrick Peyton; a missionary on then Formosa that my mother supported, Father LeSage; a world war II submarine captain who became a jesuit after the bomb tests, Jim Roach; and some film industry associates.

Shortly after we landed in Chicago, I was in what I now think of as a propaganda film, maybe for USIA, called American Working Women.. to distribute in Germany to show how american women got along when their husbands were overseas. I bring this up since I was shown at our house setting the table, the helpful child.
I got a new dress that week.

I don't remember rules at those dinners. I was mostly a listener and copier.
Yes, I was part of clearing the table, and the dishes after the people left. A lot of these people were story tellers, and I don't remember it being boisterous - as later happened when I married and we had a lot of actors to dinner at our place for untold hours.

Around that time I had kid friends, which was wonderful, and I insist is part of whatever sane stance in life I maintain. I learned at a neighbor's table - 4 children near my age with a mother Martha Stewart would consider copying, a woman I wouldn't then have said I loved but do in retrospect - how to hold a conversation at the dinner table. What is expected about passing the salt or mashed potatoes or where to put your napkin. Stuff became rules, or rule-ish, but also clear, and not told to us harshly.

In high school, the dear nuns (that set of them I am sardonic about, but I liked the nuns before and after them in my one year at a small college) made the girls academy a worthy place by giving us an hour a week etiquette class. The big thing I remember is "sit in the car until he opens the door for you, no matter how long that takes". This was circa 1957.

Skipping along some decades, I don't place my knife and fork in the right position at Wendy's. At most restaurants I go to with friends, I put my elbows on the table when I feel like it. And, by the way, has any woman here noticed that in chain restaurants with booths, the table comes to almost your collarbone? Elbows on table gain you a grip. I'm 5'5" and sit low at these places. I have a few friends that never elbow a table, and I always think, "is something wrong with your hand?"

Please pass the vinegar...

Ooooh, Miss Hanbury of my '50s acquaintance would beg to differ. You spoon toward you if there is stuff in the soup, and away from you if the soup is clear of items.

The truth is we'd order more..

It is hardly my fault that your Miss Hanbury was so crass.

No, no, of course it's not your fault. But she wasn't crass, that was common knowledge for some expanse of time, about spooning away with consomme.

You think your wary, Miss Know-it-all, and i'll think mine.

Sure.

Meantime I looked it up, and this link is crazily opposite anything I learned.
http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Soup
It makes you right on.

Too bad I never saved those courtesy handbooks.

Miss know it all? Mr. Insecure - I was commenting on my experience.
Do you want me to pitch Miss Hanbury against your grandparents?
Not likely, thou Miss Hanbury may have been older than your mother. Let's say 65 in '57.


Miss Hanbury was rather similar, in her mode, to the woman who came to our school and recited Our Town. Long filmy dresses. Command of the auditorium stage.

Past all this what was the rule when stuff -
why would you tip the bowl away from you in any case? Do people do that in real life?

Sounds like a mix up with tipping the spoon away by some news interviewer.

I think it was so you couldn't spill any on yourself. Me nowadays, I'm like Edgar. I'd just pick it up with my hands and drink from the bowl. Sure you notice my rotten table manners, Set?

I refuse to check the present internet to see if my own memory is correct, that the spoon was used to direct the objects in soup toward the mouth, or to tilt away and secure a swallow of consomme (that always struck me as odd if the bowl was only consomme), two different soups. Believe me or not.

Thirding this notion/motion of atrocious table manners/soupy habit.

yes

I've missed that. I get tipping the spoon, one way or another.

Every bit of this sounds archaic to me.

My parents started me off, then my aunt enforced things by slapping me if I did things wrong at the table. My aunt was (probably still is) a great fan of slapping other people's children.

Things got confusing once I started going to other families for meals. Everything was done backwards! I'd been taught European-style and was faced with tables set oddly. I initially tried to match my knife/fork usage to the habits of the home I was eating in. It was very confusing. Somewhere about age 9 or 10, I decided to stick with the European approach (no switching cutlery back and forth) since it was just easier - and told people that's what I was doing if they asked.

In school we were taught some of the finer details of North American etiquette in home economics. I finally mastered setting the table North American-style in Grade 7. It was a definite challenge.

Hahahaha . . . do you seriously believe your drunken blather makes me insecure?

Hey . . . wake up! You're dreamin' . . .

I do too.