Decorum

Yesterday I finished reading The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Decorum. This is pretty much the same good advice my mom’s been giving me through the years, bound into a book. You know this advice: send thank you notes promptly, don’t continue to date a guy if you can tell on the first date he’s not for you, well made clothes with reasonable hemlines are sexier than badly made clothes that show it all, etc.

It’s a comforting little book, but it needs a few chapters relating to the pitfalls of the modern world. Here are a few more rules I’d like to add to my life:

– At a show, don’t talk loudly about how you won’t buy the band’s CD because you can just as easily download it. (Oh yes, I have done this. Terrible.)

– Never talk on your cell phone in a public building, unless it’s an emergency. (I break this one all the time, sadly.) If someone calls you, you may answer your phone and tell the caller you’ll call back later, if you speak quietly. All forms of transit and transit stops count as public buildings, unless you have the train car or bus stop to yourself.

– Don’t text and drive. Forget the safety issues: it just makes you look so, so stupid. You swerve inside the lane (and sometimes out of it) like a 15 year old with a learner’s permit, and people staring at their laps while driving look like morons.

– If you live in an apartment complex, or in a similar close proximity to others, wait until you leave town to trash talk your neighbors. Other people’s homes, if they’re far from yours, are also acceptable. Otherwise, the minute you start imitating the loud sex your neighbor’s always having is the minute she will walk into the restaurant.

– Also, what are you doing imitating loud sex at restaurants? You are not Meg Ryan.

– At a certain point, it’s time to stop experimenting with your hair and find a style you can live with. Again, you are not Meg Ryan.

I haven’t learned to live by most of these rules yet (especially the hair thing), but it’s something to work towards when I get tired of working towards all my other stuff.