A Tough Nut to Crack

Dear Miss Manners:

At a a performance of "The Nutcracker" my husband and I attended, there were lots of little kids -- sisters all decked out in matching dresses, little boys in suits and ties.

We were seated by a woman about my age (old) who was with a couple of teenage girls. A young couple was seated behind us with a little boy, perhaps 2 years old, who said a few words during the performance. He asked, "What's that?" when Clara received the nutcracker and when Herr Drosselmeyer climbed up behind the clock and spread his cape like a vampire, the little boy said, "Oh, oh!"

The woman beside me turned around and said, "SSSHHHH, please."

By and large, the child was quiet, but every now and then he'd say something and his mother would whisper, "No talking, remember?"

Well, the woman beside me became more and more annoyed. She began to put her hand up over her eyes as if the child were giving her a headache and before the second act began, when the little boy made some noise, she turned to his mother and said, "Please take him out of here. We can't even hear the music. He's much too young to be here." The young couple took the little boy and left.

On the way home, my husband said he thought the woman was out of line. He said the little boy kicked the back of his seat a few times (he kicked mine, too), but it wasn't that bad. He asked me, "Why didn't you say to her, 'Are you always such a [expletive], or only at Christmas?"'

There were several children on the other side of the theater who were making quite a racket. I don't know what the woman beside me would have done had she been seated over there, but I think 2 p.m. Nutcracker performances are the province of children, and if you want austere quiet, you'd better go to an evening performance.

Should I have said anything to the woman? If so, what?

Nothing you hear from your husband. Miss Manners did not care for the sample he supplied of how to encourage politeness.

Everyone here seems to have a lot to learn. Children have to be stopped from kicking seats and adults have to be stopped from beating up on children and on one another.

The former is done by teaching children the manners of such an event before taking them and quietly reminding on the spot, as the mother was in fact doing (although she should also have been restraining the kicking). Some leeway should be allowed at child-oriented events, Miss Manners agrees, although she does not make the distinction you do between matinee and evening performances.