Today’s “Miss Conduct” column is online here.

Also, I’ve been meaning to share a very special letter that came in a week or two after my July 12 column. In that one, I answered a question from a fourth-grader, which delighted me because that is the youngest person, as far as I know, who has ever written in. I don’t know if it was a boy or girl–the e-mail was signed only with initials (kid reads the column and knows the protocol, apparently!) and was sent from the mother’s e-mail.

Here is the child’s question:

I am 10 years old. My fourth-grade teacher taught my class that girls always go first and boys are to hold doors and help girls with their coats. He says that when a girl comes to or leaves the table, boys are supposed to stand up. A lady’s job is to help the men be gentlemen by letting the men do these things. These guidelines seem old-fashioned and unfair. My mother suggested I ask you what current etiquette should be and what it may be when I am an adult?

And here is my response:

Some people think etiquette should be different for boys and girls or men and women, like your teacher does, and some people think it should be the same for both. People who think etiquette should be gender-neutral (the second kind) still practice good manners but don’t think it should depend on who’s a boy and who’s a girl. They will hold the door for someone who has packages or who is behind them, and stand or not depending on how formal the occasion is and how old the person is that they’re greeting.

Mostly, at work or school, manners are the same for men and women. People are likely to be more traditional about etiquette in dating or social situations. So it’s good to learn both ways. Etiquette isn’t just one thing; there are different manners for different situations — just like you have different clothes for school and soccer and church. Since you asked, though, I do think manners are changing. Probably by the time you are an adult most people will practice “same for both” manners, except for a small handful of people who don’t and are very angry at the people who do and write letters to people like me about it.

That last line is emphasized for reasons that will shortly become obvious, because here is the totally awesome letter I got in response:

Dear Ms. Ill-Mannered:

You contend that men and women will be treating each other the same in
terms of manners and etiquette.

You could not be more wrong, and it’s a sign of your own narrow views that you do not recognize this.

Do you open car doors for men and make sure that their coats (or dresses, in some cases) do not become caught in the door? No, and you never will.

Do you take a man’s arm to steady him (not for him to lean on) across an
icy sidewalk? No.

Do you jack up the car to fix a flat tire while the man stands to the side
of the road? No.

If an intruder came into your house – and you did not have an opportunity to immediately call the police, or if you and you husband (or wife, as the case may be) are confronted on a sidewalk by ruffians, do you stand in front of your partner and say “Darling, let me handle this.” ? No. You depend on him to protect you and put himself into harm’s way. That is how the vast majority of people behave.

I could go on and on.

You are clearly trying to social engineer young people. That’s wrong. It
is not up to you to do that. It’s up to their parents, their church, and whomever other people or groups their parents appoint. Or do you feel that you always know better?

Let us be clear that you gave the young lady factually incorrect
information in order to inject your own factually incorrect views into the
matter. You lied to the young lady, in effect, and I think you know it.
In a sense, you’re a predator, setting yourself above parents and society
in terms of morays (sic).

How sad that you set yourself above traditonally-minded people with your misguided superiority complex.

Perhaps another more objective advice columnist could straighten you out?

Would you consider that?

Okay, kids, I don’t have all the time in the world this morning, so I’m just hanging this paper target on a tree for y’all. Take your own best shots in comments. Extra points to anyone who can come up with a good “moray” joke.

(Okay, okay, just two of my favorite logic fails: Good job trying to convince me I was wrong by behaving exactly as I already predicted a small number of cranks would. Also, the LW says that it’s not up to me to “social engineer” young people, because that’s the job for their parents and whomever their parents appoint. Which, if you read the child’s original letter, would be, um, me.)

According to CNN, “The Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a ‘banana-eating jungle monkey’ has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.”

Of course the poor dear wasn’t being racist, his comments were taken entirely out of context. People who aren’t from around here simply don’t understand. All the officer meant is that, as most Cantabridgians know, academia is a jungle. To be as successful as Skip Gates, one must be nimble and clever as a monkey to climb the ranks of professorship and grab the sweet fruit of tenure. Such work is stressful, of course, so the wise academic will make sure to eat plenty of bananas to protect them from high blood pressure and peptic ulcers. Really. I’ve referred to Steven Pinker and Drew Faust as banana-eating jungle monkeys, oh, I don’t know how many times. And why do you think the Harvard Faculty Club is nicknamed “The Rainforest Cafe”?

Honestly. Some people just want to see racism, they really do.

Hat tip: Kate Harding

So, yesterday I found this article on the NYT blogs about how “parents, educators and addiction experts would react” to the multiple scenes of drinking in the new Harry Potter movie. It seemed pretty silly to me yesterday, and after seeing the movie last night, I’m downright flummoxed. Apparently the big fuss is that Harry, Hermione, and Ron go to a pub, have a “butterbeer”* or two, and relax sufficiently that Hermione puts her arm around both boys on the way back to Hogwarts.

Hermione, you drunken slut.

Honestly, what a fuss over nothing! If you’re a serious temperance advocate, go ahead and tell your kid that butterbeer is nonalcoholic, like root beer or ginger beer. Because whether you drink or not, getting away from the daily grind with your friends for a few hours will relax you. At this point in the movie, the trio desperately needs a break from the romantic, scholastic, athletic, and oh-by-the-way-Death-Eaters-are-trying-to-kill-the-world tensions that Hogwarts has come to represent. Of course they’re going to be in a more laid-back mood after a day trip to Hogsmeade. Booze isn’t the point at all.

The other objection is that teachers are seen drinking, apparently. Not so’s you’d notice, or at least not so’s I noticed, but some folks did, and they’re not happy about it. I hope they realize that if they do not want their children to be aware that professors drink, they had better avoid exposing them to any British or American literature published after World War II. They might also want to avoid exposing their children to higher education itself.

But here’s the kicker–for all the tempest in a butterbeer stein about booze, why hasn’t anyone pointed out that the entire first half of the movie is about drugs? It’s sort of unavoidable when your new main character is a Potions Master. Harry psychs Ron up for the big Quidditch match by making him believe that he’s been dosed with magic steroids, and then takes the drug–oh, sorry, “potion”–himself later in the movie. Love potions are all over the place. And the new Potions Master is not only found sneaking around the school’s “herb garden,” he knows the precise street value of certain highly valuable leaves!

If you’re going to get upset about anything, get upset about that. Because the movie doesn’t portray alcohol as doing anything other than relaxing you for an hour or so. Booze doesn’t work in the Harry Potter universe. Drugs, however, do. If the movie does have a message about substance use, it’s rather clear: Boozers are losers. What you want to do is learn how to grow and mix your own.

Now, honestly, I don’t care about any of this. I’m not a puritan about drug and alcohol use, and I’m certainly not a subscriber to the notion that all children’s entertainment must be scrubbed squeaky clean lest the child Get Ideas. (If I were taking a kid of my own to the movie, a little Miss Conduct Jr., I’d be doing a debriefing afterward, for sure. Not about the chemical substances, but about why it’s really not a good idea to fall in love with a lazy, cowardly, self-centered fellow who can’t succeed in anything without your help and then resents you for helping him. If it were a little Mr. Improbable Jr., he’d be getting the lecture on why men with quiet courage, little ego, and no fear of looking nerdy–you know, like his father, or Neville Longbottom–are the real men to be looked up to and emulated.) But if you’re going to make a big fuss about nothing, at least make a big fuss about the right nothing, eh?

*A “butterbeer,” Muggles, is a mildly alcoholic beverage, kind of like what we Kansans call “3-2 beer.” I’m sure this is what magic folk would call it, too, if they weren’t too stupid to do math. The only creatures ever known to get actually drunk from butterbeer are house elves, who are approximately a third the size of humans and have severely compromised free will to begin with.