People often compliment my manners when I go out to dinner with people. I politely thank them and smirk on the inside.
Why? Because basically I have these good table manners because my mother was the table manners nazi. I mean even to this day I cannot go to a resturant with her without her making a comment about how I am eating to fast, eating to slow, have to much on my fork, not using my knife, elbows are on the table proberly et cetera et cetera et cetera. I mean I am sitting there acting like a civilized human when everybody around me (at all the other tables) are eating like it is communal troth day at the pig farm.
I am not saying it is a bad thing, I just find it amusing. I mean I am actually really grateful she installed these table manners in me. I mean I have lost count of the time I have gone to a resturant with friends and my dinner has arrived first or in the middle and I have not started to eat (waiting instead for everybodies food to arrive at the table) and being basically bullied by my friends to start eating (trust me 20+ years of being taught not to eat until everybody is served makes it incredibly difficult to start eating - and even then I will just normally nibble on the fries or one of the sides).
I remember every single one of my mothers barbs she use to give whenever we went out to a resturant to eat. Tonight I went to Fasta Pasta with my parents for dinner (suprisingly considering its name, the place is actually a rather nice sit-down resturant) and she even made a few barbs tonight about how uncivilized I was for not cutting up my lettuce before consuming it (I admit she proberly had a point, I was just being to lazy to cut it up) and using my fingers to eat my calamari rings (I am sorry but the day I use a fork to eat a calamari ring is the day the world blows up).
Ah, as much as I like to whinge, I am quiet thankful (very thankful) in fact I was taught all this. Heck how else would've I learnt to suck up those last droplets of drink in a cup without slurping it (trick is to bite the straw). Not to mention if a person was ever to say something mean and nasty about me, the one thing they cannot complain about is how I present myself at the dinner table!
