Class Marker, In Passing

[pantryslut]

I told a dinner companion last week about an unusual class marker of mine: my father encouraged me to learn how to eat sandwiches in public with a fork and knife. His urging was strong and consistent. It was something he clearly thought I needed to know, part of how to comport myself properly in the world. When eating with strangers, I should eat everything with a fork and knife. Everything.

In general, my father was quite concerned with my table manners. One of the biggest fights we ever had growing up was over how I held my fork. (All the anger and frustration was on my side, btw.) I described his attitude as "aspirational working class." Later, in a different conversation, I said that the fighting came because I could sense something was "off" about the enterprise, but I was too young to really parse the situation for what it was. I was reacting with my usual stubbornness to the imposed expectations of others. Not my father's expectations, but the unquestioned expectations of others. I was rebelling against a dimly perceived power structure by refusing to hold my fork correctly. Really.

My father's lessons took anyway. Nowadays, I pass well. I am comfortable even in the fanciest of places. And I know how to eat a sandwich with a knife and fork.

Comments

[expanding-x-man.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, although brought up in Canada on an Indian Reserve (reservation in Canada), my mom was big on table manners. She didn't take it that far, but she did go on and on about not talking with food in your mouth, and no elbows on the table. Maybe, these are just common things. She also despised toothpicks. In any event, she was brought up like all American Indians of her generation in boarding schools with French nuns who could barely speak English and were trying to teach the Native girls English - an odd thing - anyway, the French tend to be super finicky about manners so... (I dated a French Canadian woman with relatives in France still who was super into exactly the what and when and how of manners, she thought Americans were vulgar generally)

I never understood the fancy table settings at more swanky places, and although it was explained somewhere, most likely in school - I have always felt hesitant in those places.

[marrythebed.livejournal.com]

Great post. I always stick out at really fancy restaurants because I'm still not used to how they do EVERYTHING for you. I start pushing the table back myself when I get into my chair and then jump or giggle awkwardly when the waiter interrupts my movement and pushes the table himself. Gotta work on that.

[anthrocubsf.livejournal.com]

My father taught us to always eat with a fork in the left hand, cut with a knife with the right...but always use the left hand for the fork even without a knife. I still do.

He also encouraged us to have pinkie out when drinking hot liquids (cups/mugs)...that I never did, and I definitely felt it was a class marker, that marked him as someone trying to appear a step or two higher.