Friend reinvents her past in tall tales

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

I have a friend I’ve known for decades, going back to high school. She’s been very successful in her career (computer stuff ), but has had a number of bumps in her personal life: pregnant and married at 17, multiple marriages, horrible family.

But in recent years, she has been telling pretty tall tales about her younger days to new friends: inflating her popularity, denying she did certain things, that sort of thing. I can tell you with unvarnished certainty she was not the prom queen.

Rather than call her on a number of outright lies, I questioned her gently. She claims not to remember things, and casually brushes aside truths.

She claims this is reinvention; I call it lying. What do I say to this woman who seems to think that a madeup backstory will enhance any real successes she’s already achieved?

GENTLE READER:

“Congratulations, after all this time, on becoming prom queen.”

No, not really. Your friend is pathetic, and needs sympathy more than ridicule. But unless your friend is running for political office, or is otherwise misrepresenting herself in ways that will damage others, you need hardly bother to set her record straight.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the proper etiquette for a stepmom at a wedding? Is it proper for her to attend wedding dress shopping sessions?

This stepmom was not in my daughter’s life until two years ago, when she and my ex-husband married. She had been his mistress prior to that.

GENTLE READER:

You will be sorry to hear that etiquette has no rules regulating who shops for the wedding dress. If it did,

Miss Manners would have to know more about your case in order to render a judgment: Who suggested the stepmother attending? If it was the stepmother herself, you could tell your daughter, “You know, you don’t have to let Flossie come along.”

If it was your daughter’s idea, it would be better merely to say, “Oh, dear, I was looking forward to just the two of us doing this.”

If neither works, perhaps there can be separate shopping expeditions. Even if your daughter finds what she likes in your absence, surely she will want to bring you to perform such maternal functions as mentioning that she used to be a little girl and now she is grown up and getting married, and pointing out where a tuck here or there would produce an even better fit.