Gift of friends’ company is all couple should expect

Dear Miss Manners: I received a phone call from a friend who complimented me on my daughter’s wedding invitation. We spoke briefly; then she shared with me that her husband had just lost his job. She then asked me if it would be all right if they postponed their gift until a later date, when they would be in a better position financially.

My attitude has always been, “If you can’t afford to tip, you shouldn’t be going to a restaurant.” I would have said we are unable to attend the reception due to finances; however, we will be there to see her get married. Am I wrong or being too sensitive?

Gentle Reader: Wrong and insensitive is more like it. Miss Manners will begin with your etiquette misdemeanors and build up to your crime against the very foundation of manners:

(1) You are wrong that wedding presents must be given at the time of the wedding. Anything up to a year afterward is acceptable.

(2) You are even more wrong to believe that presents are a condition of admission to a wedding celebration.

(3) Your reaction to the misfortune of someone you call a friend is so wrong it is frightening. The correct response would have been, “Don’t even think about that. The important thing is that we want you there.”

Dear Miss Manners: My school-age daughters recently received as a gift from their aunt and uncle a donation to a religious charity that our family finds offensive. The charity supports a cause and a religion that is against our family’s beliefs.

Do my daughters owe their uncle and aunt a thank-you note for this “gift”?

Gentle Reader: It is rude not to thank someone who gives you a present, and also rude to suggest that you would have preferred something else.

But if you promise to keep that in mind, Miss Manners will give you a polite way to comply with the letter of the law while violating its spirit.

This requires subtlety, which is not guaranteed to work on adults who see a present to a child as a good opportunity to annoy the parents. The letter could say: “It was kind of you to think of us on our birthdays. I know how much Charity X means to you.” Dear Miss Manners: I recently suffered a severe head trauma. Thankfully, I seem to have recovered in most ways. Unfortunately, I have small holes in my memory. I do not want to hurt old friends’ and acquaintances’ feelings by ignoring them, but I seem to have forgotten some of their faces, even though I remember who they are.

My high school has a newsletter that gives people updates on how everyone is doing. I was wondering how to write in to warn people, to prevent hurt feelings without seeming maudlin or self-pitying. Gentle Reader: Depending on when you were graduated, you may find that everyone is claiming memory problems, even when stuck on trivial matters that no one ever does remember. Miss Manners has observed even young adults smacking their heads in frustration and tastelessly claiming to have Alzheimer’s disease if they can’t remember who played a minor role in a film they saw years ago.

So she predicts that your classmates will be grateful if you write a cheerful note to the newsletter saying, “I hope we’ll have name tags when we get together. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

Send questions to Miss Manners’ website: www.missmanners.com; to her email address: dearmiss manners@gmail.com; or through postal mail: Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.