By Tim Sanders

It is time again for Mr. Mannerly Man, Chancellor and CEO of the Mannerly Man Institute and Super Delegate to the 2008 Washoe County, Nevada Wetland Rodent Skinner’s Convention, to ... uh ... oh yeah, to answer your questions involving etiquette, manners, morals, ethics, and places you can safely store your baked potato which will not get you kicked off the Olympic swimming team.

Q: What is the best way of acknowledging grief when a dear friend passes away due to an unfortunate boating accident?

A: True grief is best expressed with delicacy and sincerity. Mr. Mannerly Man points to the words of Nick Sparrow, whose friend, Christopher Mayo, drowned after he and two other acquaintances became seriously drunk and capsized a canoe they’d "borrowed" from a lakefront home in Orange County, Florida. According to Orlando Post Sentinel writer Bianca Prieto, as Sparrow waited on the shore while deputies searched for Mayo’s body, he said "I know he’s in there. I’ve got that feeling in my stomach. He’s not here no more."

Q: I have a co-worker who asks me very personal questions which I don’t want to answer. Last Monday he asked if I had scored with my girlfriend Brenda over the weekend, and I told him I didn’t like to discuss things like that. But he wouldn’t quit, and asked me several other questions about what we did, all of which sounded like baseball questions but were really suggestible of other things. You know, like did I get to third base or did I strike out or did we go into extra innings. I finally told Earl I didn’t even like baseball, so then he told everybody in the office how if I wasn’t careful Brenda was going to take me out of the lineup and bring in a pinch hitter, if they knew what he meant, ha, ha. So I have been thinking seriously about either transferring to another department or taking a baseball bat to Earl, just to teach him a lesson. What do you recommend?

A: Mr. Mannerly Man recommends an open batting stance with your feet spread about eight inches wider than your shoulders and slightly more weight on your rear foot. Keep your hips and shoulders level, and hold the bat about midway between horizontal and vertical. Do not try to knock Earl "out of the park," just make good, solid contact, and remember to follow through. You might want to wear a batting helmet.

Q: I have a friend who has that stupid "Call Waiting" phone feature, and a few minutes into every phone conversation she’ll say there’s somebody else calling and put me on hold while she jabbers with that person, and then another person will call her, and then another one, until finally if I’m still on the line she’ll come back and say she has to go because she was just talking to such and such or so and so and lost track of time and now her husband is coming home for dinner, and she’s been on the phone since breakfast and hasn’t put his tomato soup in the microwave yet or some such silliness. Would it be impolite for me to just hang up every time she puts me on hold?

A: How about hanging up before she puts you on hold? Mr. Mannerly Man does not like Call Waiting. Mr. Mannerly Man believes in the old fashioned "first come, first serve" rule which allows all callers, regardless of race, creed, or color, to instantaneously determine whether the person they are calling is already talking on the phone by the use of an ingenious device called the BUSY SIGNAL! Mr. Mannerly Man’s wife, Mrs. Mannerly Woman, had that damnable Call Waiting feature installed on our telephone, but Mr. Mannerly Man ignores that stinking little beep, beep, and refuses to bail out on whoever he’s talking to so he can talk to some moronic vacation resort salesperson or someone else whom he feels should jolly well wait his or her turn. You may want to tell your friend that recent studies have shown that the Call Waiting feature causes brain shrinkage, although in her case that might be perceived as an empty threat.

Q: My brother Lester and me sometimes we take his boy Herbal to lunch at McDonald’s because his wife she works at Hardee’s. By which I mean Lester’s wife. Herbal has this nasty habit of putting french fries up his nose which Lester thinks is real comical. When I tell him he ort to make the little goober quit that, he gets all offended and says him and Marlene seen it in a British movie once and taught Herbal to do it. They think it shows he has real talent and he will grow up to be an actor. Now you and me both know that french fries up the nose is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to acting, and there are real actors out there who can cram their nostrils full of french fries and carrots, and even stuff asparagus and celery sticks into their ears, who can’t get a job on TV. So how do I tell that to Lester without making him throw Herbal’s Happy Meal at me like he done last week?

A: How old is little Herbal?

Q: Nineteen. Why?

A: Mr. Mannerly Man feels that you should take little Herbal aside some day and introduce him to jalapeno peppers. He’s old enough for that.

Q: The ladies’ room at our church fellowship hall is not very big, but the acoustics are better than what we got in the auditorium. Last Wednesday night during our pot luck dinner my wife Angie she went into the restroom after the preacher graced the table to tell Miss Violet that her noises was making it difficult for the rest of us to concentrate on our meat loaf and greens. And so one thing led to another and to make a long story short, two of the larger women had to go in and pull Angie and Miss Violet apart. So should Angie be responsible for the broken mirror AND the cracked commode, or should Miss Violet have to chip in, too?

A: Mr. Mannerly Man thinks it would be best to take up a special mirror and commode offering next Sunday morning, and whatever is left over could go into purchasing a louder exhaust fan and better bathroom insulation.

Mr. Mannerly Man hopes this has been helpful, but he is obliged to warn readers that there are no guarantees when it comes to good manners. Hospitals are full of people who’ve attempted to improve their manners without proper supervision, and Mr. Mannerly Man is not responsible for amateurs who hurt themselves trying to follow his advice.