Chew baby.

Our dogs have been well named, in my opinion. 

Tralfaz, the original name of Astro from The Jetsons, grew up to be a very large and very vocal dog. While he may not share his opinions by saying "Ruh roh," he certainly makes a lot of other sounds to express his thoughts, and he has many of them. Whines, sighs, play barks, serious barks, disgusted huffs, rusty yawns, anxious yodels, he does them all. 

The late Nipper, named for the famous RCA mascot, certainly liked to nip as a puppy, and was always as spunky and chipper as the name would suggest.

And the name for Izzy, the new dog, often comes up in conversation, as in: Izzy ever going to stop biting us? Izzy ever going to stop tearing at the rugs? Izzy ever going to sleep in a crate successfully? Izzy ever going to be sane? And the answer to all of these and many similar questions to date is: NO.

There are several issues at play here. One is that when we got him he needed elbow surgery and he currently has hip dysplasia, and we've always been cautious about exercising him too much and causing him pain. However, an energetic young dog who doesn't get enough activity is a dog that will destroy everything in his path, so while he hasn't reached that stage yet, we are upping the walks & frolic time.

Another issue is that he has never shaken the idea that the best way to initiate play is to start biting. Dude, that worked when you and your siblings were the size and shape of dinner rolls, but that's got to stop! The odd thing is, Iz never bites Fazzy. Just the hands that feed him.

A third is he has not figured out a way to tell us when he has to go out, so he -- you guessed it! -- bites. My wife has ordered these bells that -- seriously! -- you can train your dog to use to let you know it's time to go. Like he's calling for the concierge. 

I'll update you on how that works out.

Finally, Izzy is still like a toddler, in that he just goes on one speed until he collapses. Whereas a toddler will be having the time of his life and suddenly fall asleep or burst out crying, Izzy has another behavior. Rhymes with kites. I might be sitting with him of an evening, holding his favorite Benebone chew toy, and suddenly CHOMP -- he's moved past the toy bone and onto the Fred bone. 

It's not like we haven't been training. He gets training every day. He definitely gets negative consequences for bad behavior, usually exile into the pen for a timeout. Sometimes he'll reform and be a humble bumble for a while; sometimes he'll come out and chomp right where he left off. My wife has threatened to send him back, and I've threatened to put him in a huge box with a sign offering a lousy dog to anyone who can stand him for free. Free to (very tough) home.

We hoped his behavior would improve when he got his adult teeth, then when he got elbow surgery, then when he got neutered, then when... I don't even remember what other milestones he's chewed his way past. He'll be a year old in about six weeks, and I guess we could hope for more mature behavior, or at least more acceptance of correction to bad behavior, at that time. Seems like a pretty forlorn hope at this point.

The worst thing about it is, when he is good, he is the sweetest dog in the world. 

That's how they getcha! 

Kiss da hand?

My wife got a lovely set of gloves for Christmas, quite glamorous, and enjoyed showing them off to me. She waved her hands in a most ladylike fashion, and I gently took the proffered hand and touched my face toward it, in a most sophisticated way.

"You didn't kiss my hand," she said.

"No, I did not," I said. "I heard long ago that one doesn't actually apply the lips to the hand, but dips the nose down and makes no contact."

I can't believe I knew something about etiquette that she did not. I don't know where I got that tidbit. but it is backed up by no less an authority than Miss Manners, who describes it thus: "the gentleman who kisses the air above a matron's hand (never an unmarried girl's) in the European equivalent of a handshake". In another place (I recall not where) I have read that the nose may tap the back of the hand gently, but I think it best to keep my nose to myself.

All of this brings out my own inner Manners man -- New Yawk Mannahs Guy, who knows how to behave an' stuff.

"Suppose youse just had some wings or sumpin', or maybe a greasy slice from Maroni's, always greasy in there, capisce? You're goin' to a fancy shindig but you think they might have dem little tiny little 'hor dervs,' like baby mouse food on a cracker, and you gotta eat first or you'll be stahvin'. Now ya mout is all sloppy, but you go into the place and meet some classy broad who holds out her glove like you should kiss it, you know? Well, you're not supposed ta go wipin' your mouth off on her like some pig, much as you wanna get the grease off. And you ain't gonna go blowin' your nose or nothin' on it, either. You're a freakin' human bein', not a cocker spaniel, right? Don't go sniffin' or lickin', just nod your head down witout makin' contact and then give back the hand. Don't go tryin' to hold on to it like a souvenir from the boardwalk at Beach Haven. Whadda ya, stupit or sumpin'? You do that and you might wind up kissin' da mat, like you got some other glove in ya face."

Kapow! Right in da mout. 

So as you can see, just because I grew up in the city doesn't mean I don't know anything about manners. I'm still a little shaky on a few things, though. I don't know which fork is supposed to be used to jab the hand of your buddy when he reaches across the table for the bread. The shrimp fork is too small, but the others all seem to work. Any advice?

Magic words.

When I was a baby, I had no manners at all. Rude, demanding, loud, unless I was asleep. Good thing I was cute. Good thing all babies are cute.

As I grew older my mom tried to teach me manners, but it's a hard concept for little kids to grasp.

One day in class I saw some art -- a poster or something -- of a Persian magician on a magic carpet. In my memory (always suspect, I grant you) he looked a lot like Fariik the Magician from Hanna-Barbera's Arabian Knights.

He was floating along under a sign that said "The Magic Words," and other carpets floating nearby had words written on them: "Please," "Thank You," "You're Welcome," "May I," and the like. 

Then it finally clicked: Words have power. 

When I used these words, suddenly the adults in my life were happier, more willing to fulfill my requests. It was magic.

From that day to this I have tried to be polite. My mother probably didn't know what had happened to her kid.

I mention all this because it's the third Sunday in Lent. I've heard from some folks recently who consider themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." I'm willing to accept that an amorphous spirituality is better than nothing. However, I feel sad that they feel spirituality and religion are different. If my religion is divided from spirituality, then I'm doing my religion wrong. 

And that gets to the mumbo-jumbo. Catholics have always gotten the sneer for the blah blah blah of the Mass, the endless words, the Latin (not so much that anymore), the rote prayers, the smells & bells, and so on, mainly from Protestants who seem to think that words used in the Mass are unimportant. I can understand that. After all, Jesus warns us in Matthew (6:7) "do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words." We believe that's not what's going on in the Mass, though, especially during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Every word is important, is for our benefit. 

I may not feel that way if I'm impatient to get to brunch. That's my failing.

Were I to hear the Mass in Latin or any other foreign language, I am sure it would sound like gobbledygook to me. But language is language; to use the Cartesian definition, Man is "the animal that talks." (And sometimes "the animal that won't shut up.") Language inspires us to love, as in sweet nothings, love letters, words of love. Or the opposite, as in fightin' words. Words can be meaningless, but only if babbled meaninglessly, or spat out Lorem ipsum style by a machine. Words are important. And thus are the words in the Mass, and thus is the Mass. At least that's my take.

As for the smells & bells -- who doesn't like incense and church bells? Smellin' great, soundin' great. No problem there.

Honesty vs. manners.

When I returned to work after my mother's death, a kindly coworker -- the first I saw that morning -- asked how I was doing.

"Lousy," I snapped. 

That was a long time ago, and I've regretted my honesty at that moment ever since.

We have an authenticity issue in our culture, but this is nothing new. As long as people have realized they could make stuff up and mask their thoughts we have known that people can lie. Even the animal kingdom is full of lies, camouflage, and duplicity. Toddlers come up with whoppers. All part of the human condition. 

But in the postwar years we got sick of politeness and manners that masked bad intent. That's fine with me; we would like our villains to be obvious and clear even though we don't wish to be ourselves. In the rush, though, to clear off phoniness, generations of Holden Caulfields wanted to throw out politeness entirely, to erase manners, to get through to the truth.   

To rip off the mask.

This has not worked well.

First of all, it is never a good idea to lose manners. Second, we don't really want as much honesty as we think we do. Finally, getting rid of good manners, we discover, does not even really lead to authenticity after all.

For a long time manners have been seen as foolish and artificial. Ron Barrett's comic strip Politenessman spent years showing manners as the enemy of intelligence -- although my experience and probably yours do not tell us that the stupider people are the more polite they are. Comedies of manners have a long history in our culture, making a lot of hay out of the artifice of manners. But if manners are unnatural, it is in the same way that steel and farms and music and performing arts are unnatural -- they don't exist in nature but we need them for civilization.

I think most of us with a little perspective see the value of manners. As Dave Foley's character Troy said in Blast from the Past, "[G]ood manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn't know that. I thought it was just a way of acting all superior." Manners have been taken for snobbery, for hiding ill will, for a means of lying, and indeed can be used for these things. But what they are mostly is the sign of respect we owe one another, which functions as the oil in the social machine. Maybe you'll get more honesty with no manners, but the respect wears away quickly and the machine breaks down anyhow.

As for the next issue -- how much honesty do we want? When someone asks you how you are doing, do you or this other person really want to talk about your bunions, your hemorrhoids, your large electric bill, your kid's shoplifting, your other kid's drinking, your shoddy brake pads, your sinus infection, your anxiety over the side effects of Cialis? I'm thinking probably not. Manners give us pleasant, general answers that can be used to indicate that things are not 100% swell but are okay. Which is also important, because the embarrassing examples I give are pretty common, but if they happened to me, I could not consider them proof that I had the worst life of anyone in the world. Manners can give us perspective and allow for gratitude.

Finally, I argue that trying to express your real, possibly miserable self also may lead to just more phoniness. Why? I know people who enjoy -- and I do mean enjoy -- a reputation for being grumpy or mean. (I was like that in college, for a while.) What do guys like that do when they're having a good day? Ruin the reputation? No, they hide their happiness under grouchiness, they act mean even when their hearts aren't in it. The "truth" has just become another mask.

So, by throwing away good manners we gain very little and we lose social cohesion. We can probably all agree that there's very little social cohesion about these days, and little to find good about that. Letting our terrible selfish insides out has not turned out to be the truth that sets us free, but rather just makes us enemies of one another some more.

I am at least trying to ask for the salt rather than grabbing for it. You have to start somewhere.

Don't wear that.

I don't want to be mean about it---Lord knows I've been inappropriately dressed many times. I once got scolded (nicely) by a priest for wearing a hat into church. That was decades ago and I still feel bad about it.

And I do wear plaid, at least when Mrs. Key is not looking and I can sneak out the door.

But this is just not right for a nice restaurant.

The guy seemed to be uncomfortable about it, which leads me to believe he was tricked into taking his lady to a nicer restaurant than he expected. Management didn't care; with the margins in the restaurant business these days they're just relieved everyone shows up with pants. But there are ways to dress to go out to dinner and ways not to dress to go out to dinner, and this is part of category 2. 

Still, I do give anyone high marks for at least being aware of being underdressed. These days everyone slumps around like dumb oafs everywhere---TGI Friday's, the mall, Disneyland, work, interviews, childbirth, church, weddings, funerals, surgery, it's all the same to the lumpen proletariat. This was not the way the world looked just twenty years ago. What the hell is happening to us? Where will it all end? 

My guess: No pants in the restaurant. 

As for me and mine, we will stand by our trousers. Call me a reactionary if you like. That's how we roll.