Soggy plate must suffice when someone else hosts

Dear Miss Manners: If I attend a cocktail party in a friend’s or acquaintance’s home, and I know from the past that wine will be served in disposable plastic cups and food will be served with plastic forks on paper plates, is there any chance in the world that I can get away with bringing my own mess kit?

I’ve done it at street festivals and it’s fairly discreet, though it does attract some attention. I carry a small collapsible stainless steel cup wherever I go, and I wonder if it would be acceptable to use at parties.

I can think of several arguments for this practice and several against. I do wonder if I might be at more of an advantage trying this now, when the trend is to appreciate efforts toward “greening.” Gentle Reader: Much as she loathes eating from soggy plates with fragile forks, and drinking from crackable cups, Miss Manners is even more opposed to criticizing one’s host — even by implication, and even in the name of saving the planet. The clear indication of your mess kit is that visiting that person’s home is like camping out.

Besides, there is no chance that producing a collapsible cup at a cocktail party can be done so discreetly as to make it acceptable. The ban does not extend to the street fair, for which there is no host to offend, and at which pitching camp may go unnoticed. Dear Miss Manners: Iama young woman in her early 20s whose friends are being proposed to and becoming engaged. I have noticed that when these young ladies present their happy news in social settings, the other women ask to see the ring. When the ring is obligingly passed around, many women try it on.

I seem to be the only one who doesn’t do so. I have always assumed that the engagement ring was something that a woman other than whom it was presented to was not to try on, because it is ostensibly a symbol of the promise between the happy couple to be wed.

My friends say it doesn’t matter as long as the lady who owns it has passed it around, because that signals that the other ladies may try it on their hands, but I am not quite so certain. Am I wrong to simply admire the ring in my hand (rested on the palm) rather than on it? Gentle Reader: Ladies old enough to wed should have emerged from the Show and Tell Years, but apparently many have not. Passing around the engagement ring is only slightly more decorous than passing around the bridegroom.

When it gets to you, Miss Manners encourages you to express admiration, but you are under no obligation to bite it, try it on or ask the price. Dear Miss Manners: What is the protocol for sharing mobile phone numbers? When someone gives me their mobile number, I don’t assume it’s OK to give it out (unless that person has so specified). But people just casually ask for other people’s numbers like it’s no big deal. I generally reply something like, “I don’t have permission to give it out, but if you’ll give me yours, I’ll ask him to call you,” and often I’m accused of being obstructionist or dramatic. Am I? Gentle Reader: Not in this case, at least. Miss Manners assures you that yours is a perfectly polite way to handle it. If these people feel that you are being overly dramatic, you might tell them, “I’m sure that you wouldn’t want me to give out your number to relentless salespeople or overzealous suitors.”