Rudeness deserves to be startled

Dear Miss Manners: My 17-year-old daughter has a serious boyfriend. Recently I have had three separate individuals ask me if she is having sex, since she is in a serious relationship.

I am appalled! Since when has it become acceptable to ask about a teenager’s personal life?

Miss Manners, my daughter and I have a lovely and communicative relationship, but I have no desire to share this information with nosy outsiders. How can I reply to these outlandish questions?

Gentle Reader: These people can hardly wait to lecture you on how naive and old-fashioned you are to object to such questions. And if you try to argue otherwise, this vulgar haranguing will only get worse.

So Miss Manners advises you to startle them by going with the implied accusation of being prudish. This is counterintuitive, she knows, but it works.

Thus you would take on an expression of shock and exclaim, “Are you insulting my daughter?”

This will force them to claim that all young people are sexually active — and that gives you the chance to say, “Are they really? And they don’t even mind if their parents repeat their confidences to anyone who happens to be curious?”

Dear Miss Manners: I am in second grade and sometimes read your column. Here is my question: Is it ever polite to burp out loud? I was wondering this because my brothers burp a lot, and they say in some cultures it is polite to burp to show that you like the food.

Gentle Reader: Knowing about different cultures is important, and Miss Manners gathers that your brothers have learned that there are other languages of behavior, just as there are other languages that different people speak.

The next lesson is when to use such languages. For example, it would be wonderful if they could speak Japanese. But would they go around speaking it to Americans who did not understand?

There are places where burping is understood to be acceptable. In America, it is considered unfortunate at best, but rude if no attempt is made to control it.