Maquinna's Poop du Jour

Miss Manners

Has there truly been a breakdown of common etiquette - or was etiquette ever truly common? Once again my adventures as Super Auntie have been met without even an email from the child's parent acknowledging that a gift arrived in the mail. How did I develop the habit of the thank-you note while my siblings did not, never mind impart that habit to their children?

I don't expect anything in return for gifts, really. I'm definitely not keeping score. My family's on the other side of the continent and I get to see them but rarely. It does sadden me that I will probably never know my nieces and nephews well, but that was something I had to accept when I decided to move so far away - and to be honest, I doubt we would have been particularly close had I remained at home.

Were we taught to do this as children ourselves? I can't say that we were. Perhaps a few times, as a child, I wrote a thank-you note for some nasty itchy sweater, struggling to find more than two words to diplomatically express my thanks without faking enthusiasm (I sure didn't want to encourage more of that kind of gift...). Mostly I just want to be assured the gift actually got there. Trusting in the delivery of a gift slipped into a black hole of a mail box is sometimes a little disconcerting, and I'd at least like to know that one child isn't wondering why their sibling or cousin got a gift three months ago and they didn't.

What should be a simple form of civility has now become a lost art. Perhaps because I'm more inclined to put my thoughts into writing, the act of the thank-you note doesn't seem like such a chore to me. Those who are parents like to scoff and roll their eyes when we who have yet to become parents add yet another thing to our list of things our child will always or will never do, and yet this is one skill I must add to my list. Simple expressions of gratitude and politeness never, I think, go out of style.

posted by Maquinna @ 3:25 p.m.