Pandemic makes it easier to enforce personal boundaries

I enjoy personal space and do not like being touched, other than by my husband. I am a friendly, outgoing person who simply doesn’t like to hug.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, except to my mother-inlaw, it is. She insists on hugging me upon her arrival and departure — of every visit.

I dread it. I try to avoid it, then submit to it stiffly. This has gone on for 10 years. I have told her I don’t like to hug. She says, “Well, I do!” and hugs me. At the end of her visits, I walk them politely to the door and say “bye,” but it just isn’t enough for her.

Why do people feel the need to force themselves upon others in this manner? I finally had enough at a family event when she walked up to where I was seated, announced she was leaving and demanded I stand and hug her. I told her in front of the whole family I do not like to hug and that she shouldn’t demand hugs.

Now she makes many angry passive-aggressive comments.

Is this really a social convention I must accept? I am so uncomfortable now that I don’t know what to do.

Dear Miss Manners:

Gentle reader: You are in luck. It is not often one can say something positive in regard to the pandemic, but it certainly has cut down on unwanted hugging.

You can now say sweetly, as you hastily back away, “I think we’d better maintain social distancing. I certainly wouldn’t want to endanger you.” For that matter, you don’t need the virus to do this, as if alluding to some ordinary indisposition.

Miss Manners has been hoping that the pandemic has taught all kinds of people who go in for unwanted touching to keep their hands to themselves. Hugs should not be a benefit that the arrogant can bestow on the unwilling, but a matter of mutual consent.

Dear Miss Manners:

When I receive a call on my cellphone, most of the time it is from someone in my electronic phone book, so the name of the caller appears on my screen as the phone is ringing.

What is the proper thing to do when answering such a call? Just say “hello” as if I don’t know who is calling? Or say, “Hello, Mary”? This was not a problem before rampant caller ID.

Gentle reader: Because the caller cannot see what you see, a “hello,” delivered with that cadence that indicates it is a question, will never get you into trouble.

But now that caller ID is so common, Miss Manners gives you her permission to greet a known caller by name. So long, that is, as you do not plan to follow the greeting with an urgent, “I told you not to call me this late!”

I hosted a lunch for a dear friend of mine ( just her and me) in order to celebrate her birthday. Both of us have been isolating ourselves and she had been feeling depressed, so I invited her to my home for a birthday lunch.

I spent two days shopping for food, preparing it, setting a pretty table, arranging flowers and buying her a gift. After lunch, she left in a hurry, telling me that her drywall guy just

Dear Miss Manners:

texted her to see if he could come over now to do some work.

I have not heard from her since that date.

I’m offended and hurt by her actions. Am I overreacting?

Gentle reader:

No.

Dear Miss Manners: I need your advice on how to approach my elderly neighbor. She sent her son over into our backyard to trim down two of our bushes. She did not ask permission to do this, and the bushes were clearly on our property, because her son had to go around her fence to get to them.

This bothers me because I had a stranger in my backyard, and now there is a huge mess. What is the most polite way to tell her this was unacceptable, and that in the future, she needs to ask my partner or me to trim our own bushes?

Gentle reader: “Your son may not have realized, but he was cutting the bushes on our property. We cleaned up the mess, but in the future, please talk to us before compromising our hedges without consent.”

Dear Miss Manners: Am I the only one bothered by the term “invites” when people really mean “invitations”? I hear the term, but it does not appear correct to me.

Gentle reader: It is not. “Invite” may be commonly used colloquially as a noun — but not, you will notice, by Miss Manners.