Madame Etiquette's exquisite instruction: Behave!

Column

You might expect someone who deals in difficult, complicated and altogether daunting concepts would brandish a name to match, and Teresa Kathryn Grisinger Reilly does not disappoint.

Her full legal sobriquet is more of a mouthful than crab-stuffed mushroom caps. Regarding this, our subject — a Seven Springs resident by way of California's Monterrey Bay, San Diego and Hawaii's Maui — notes we must never attempt to speak the former until we have utterly cleared our palates of the latter.

The world according to Teresa Kathryn etc., teems with similar useful instructions, from holding doors and chairs, to the correct manipulation of tableware, to the importance of mastering rudimentary dance steps and personal, handwritten notes. These and dozens of other subtle skills are the fine-grain sandpaper of society that, applied with good will and persistence, smooth the abrasive edges of human interaction, resulting in a culture that harmonizes with the strains of mutual respect.

Yes, proper etiquette, properly executed, is just that magical. Better still, acquiring these charms is as simple as the handle our expert uses professionally: T.K. Reilly.

We suffer today under the yoke unwittingly fashioned during the chain-breaking 1960s — the notion that attention to etiquette squelches personal creativity. That's perfect nonsense, and Reilly's adult life — she is 62, "the same age as Meryl Streep" — has been devoted to correcting that motley record.

Published in November, her latest effort, "Behave! Etiquette Lessons for Adults," is a timely primer inspired by an email sent to Reilly's website (www.

etiquettelessons.com) from a desperate disciple achingly typical of our age.

The writer was among the long-term unemployed and had come to link his "overall image and professional dining skills," "issues with the way I hold my fork" and a tendency to "drink a lot when I am around clients" with an inability "to represent myself in a positive way." (Speaking of underutilized areas for federal job-training dollars.)

In 82 efficient pages, Reilly guides her rough-hewn muse through the orderly maze of polite society, concluding with a narrative that places exquisite manners at the center of closing a deal involving international clients.

Much like Reilly's awkward client, we, too, are in need of instruction. No, not about which fork to use, silly. Or what to bring to a conversation (a smile, good manners, a compliment, a light joke and a story). And we're well-taught on the all-important hostess gift.

Our concern regards the unfolding calendar. It's an election year, and just from the squalls we're navigating in the run-up to Florida's GOP presidential primary, we predict nine months of unruly seas. While we concede the only way around is through, how, Madame Etiquette, shall we express our passions as noble practitioners of the First Amendment and still emerge on the other side able to endure the presence of our rivals — especially (horrors!) if they're on the winning side?

"Etiquette is an aura that goes before you," Reilly says, "and it protects us from our base instincts, on the one hand. On the other, it is a rite of passage in the social world."

Translation? "Oh, as a nation we are so well-educated," she says, "but sometimes we are not so smart." The wise campaigner begins, Reilly says, by respecting the rules of engagement. "Avoid labels," she says. "Labels allow you to be dismissive. It's not helpful, and it's no way to win an argument."

Moreover, "Seek common ground. See where your paths separate. Ask: 'How can we bring them back together?' Keep it friendly."

That's all well and good, Madame Etiquette, but what do we do when confronted by hostile label-slingers who want no part of our path? "Use their labels as an invitation to redefinition," she says. "Call me a goody two-shoes and I'll own up to it. Call me a snob, OK; I have high standards and I respect people who have high standards."

Understand, she says, that the first one to hurl an insult loses. Know your history; know your facts. Then, Reilly says, focus your gaze into a mask of concern and ask with sympathy: "Insults? Is that all you've got?"

And when, finally, we're told we're hopelessly old-fashioned, out-of-touch fuddy-duddies, how shall we respond, Madame Etiquette?

By replying, with all the pride and forcefulness gentle, mannerly, confident society allows:

"Am not!"

Duly noted.