Wife has very specific ideas regarding gifting of flowers

Dear Miss Manners: After a spat with my wife, I brought home a bouquet of flowers as a peace offering. She thanked me and set them aside.

After a couple of hours, I noticed that the flowers were still on the counter, and asked why they weren’t in a vase. She said it was my responsibility to put them in a vase to complete the gesture. I told her I thought she should put them in a vase to show her appreciation.

Which is it? When giving a bouquet of flowers, does the giver have to put them in a vase to complete the gift?

On a similar note, my wife says that for birthdays, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries or Mother’s Day, flowers have to be delivered by a florist to count as thoughtful. I think handing someone flowers, or having them waiting in a vase on a table, also shows thought.

Gentle reader: With all due respect to your wife, Miss Manners thinks she has some very specific and peculiar ideas about what constitutes thoughtfulness in flower giving.

Does she think that people who bring them to dinner parties should rifle through their hosts’ cabinets to find a vase? Granted, this can be an awkward task for a busy host, but certainly that is not the solution. And bringing flowers oneself is definitely more personal and thoughtful than having a florist deliver them. The accompanying note is so often mistaken for the receipt — or suspiciously composed in a stranger’s handwriting.

But Miss Manners certainly does not wish to start another argument — if only because the apology protocol would be far too complicated.

Dear Miss Manners:

While shopping in a large warehouse store, I saw an elderly woman using an electric shopping cart that was at the end of its charge. It was clear that she wasn’t likely to make it the end of the aisle, let alone all the way across the store.

I told her that if she would stay put, I would go try to find her another cart. At the front of the store, there were two or three available, so I got on one with a full charge.

Before I could drive away, I was accosted by a belligerent man who loudly admonished me for taking a cart designed for the disabled.

I’ve never felt the need to explain myself to random strangers and he wasn’t in a mood to listen, so I drove around him as he shouted after me and created quite a scene. I was really shaken by the incident, but don’t know how I could have handled the situation differently.

Is there a better way to deal with corrections from the loud and belligerent?

Gentle reader: Although it does amuse Miss Manners to think of your driving away and shouting back at him, “It’s not for meeeeeee!,” she agrees that it would be futile. Loud and belligerent people are not generally open to reason and logic.

Better that you and the cartless woman knew your true intentions. But it is a lesson for us all not to make assumptions about situations in which we are not involved.

Dear Miss Manners: Iam an 11-year-old male. I’ve recently come across a dilemma when I try to read the writing on a girl’s or woman’s shirt.

More often than not, the print on a shirt is on the chest, and it may come across that I’m looking at her breasts. Since I am a boy, this is a serious issue I have. It seems awkward to say “Excuse me, I’m just reading your shirt,” especially to a stranger. Your thoughts?

Gentle reader: Miss Manners’ thoughts are that you may already require reading glasses. It should only take a quick glance to read someone’s shirt.

If you are being accused of staring, you have looked for too long. True, if people wear shirts with more than a sentence on them, they only have themselves to blame for others taking the time to read it. And Miss Manners has found that it is easy to forget what you are wearing. But if you do get caught looking for too long, you had better be able to quickly reference what you were reading.

Dear Miss Manners: Can I wear boots in March when it is 30 degrees outside?

Gentle reader: Unless you are tramping around indoors with wet boots, who is going to stop you? Certainly not Miss Manners, who is probably looking around for her own pair.