Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Dear Miss Manners:

Our adopted son is in kindergarten, and at school there was a discussion about President Lincoln. The topic turned to slavery, where our son was singled out for having "brown" skin (he's biracial) and the class was told his ancestors were slaves, versus the ancestors of the other students who were slave owners because their skin was white.

When he told me the story, it made me cringe. Clearly he's learning about his identity, and that is certainly important, but I am uncomfortable with him being pointed out as different because of his skin color in order to illustrate a story.

I try to emphasize when he is making comparisons to why our family looks different from others that we are all like M&M's -- different colors on the outside, same on the inside. Should I approach his teacher about this topic, or let it go?

You should get yourself down to that school immediately and explain to the teacher why it is wrong to single out a child like that; and if that doesn't help, you must explain it to the principal. Perhaps you should go to the principal anyway. It strikes Miss Manners that aside from the rudeness of embarrassing a child, someone who does not realize that not all blacks were slaves and not all whites were slave owners should not be teaching even the most elementary history.

Dear Miss Manners:

How does one go about introducing a new eating utensil?

I have great problems eating pizza, onion soup and spaghetti neatly. What I need is a delicate pair of scissors, which would be called "cheese scissors." They could resemble the small scissors that hairdressers use. On the place setting, they could be placed to the right of the knife.

How can I go about making these scissors acceptable? Shall I just buy a pair and start using them?

It seems to me that discreetly cutting the cheese string would be much more ladylike than pulling a long string of cheese or wrapping it around my finger until it finally breaks. What do you think?

Great idea. You'll be a social pariah, of course, but at least you won't have strings of food hanging down your front.

Don't get Miss Manners wrong. The hostility will not come from silver snobs, who would be delighted to add another useful tool to our (ah, their) collections. The idea behind specialized tools is, naturally, to make life easier for the diner, not harder.

However, it is unfortunately true that there was a nasty time during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution when guessing the uses of peculiar flatware served as an entrance test for moving up into the middle class.

This is no longer the case. The table has become simplified, to put it delicately -- possibly because so few people sit at it. But the sting of the old days has a peculiar afterlife. People still speak with mysterious pride of "not knowing which fork to use" as if nearly all those specialized Victorian pieces hadn't been melted down to finance World War I, and now they would be lucky to get a metal fork instead of a plastic one.

Those are the folks who may at first admire your originality and daring, but will turn on you if your idea catches on. They'll brood that you look down on them for not recognizing, using or owning the new tableware tool.

But at least you won't have cheese on your chin.

Feeling incorrect? E-mail your etiquette questions to Miss Manners (who is distraught that she cannot reply personally) atMissManners@unitedmedia.comor mail to United Media, 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.

2008Judith Martin