Or, “Now which fork would you use?”

My friend Brian and I think we must be the only two people who stand over the kitchen sink during bing cherry season, eating cherries and spitting the pits into the garbage disposal.

*

There’s something satisfying about tossing food scraps.  Maybe it’s a racial memory of Vikings or English lords in their castles or mead halls, with straw spread all over the floor and the dogs fighting over the mutton bones casually tossed away when the diners were finished with them.

*

Or that longing for decadence we feel when watching the Russian cavalry officers in an old movie down their large shots of vodka and then all fling their glasses into the fireplace.

*

Years ago, two friends, a different wife and I planned a picnic on the Marin County Headlands.  Cold fried chicken and artichokes.  As we finished each bit, we tossed the bones and the leaves over our shoulders into the grass.  It wasn’t littering.  It was all organic.  We carefully took our paper and plastic away with us.

*

But that was outdoors.  Castles and mead halls being in short supply nowadays, different rules apply inside.

*

My nephew from Oklahoma, a kid who used to have no discernable table manners until he started visiting Uncle Steve and Auntie Marianne, was out here last month with his parents for freshman orientation at UC Santa Cruz.  One night we ordered Indian take-out, including tandoori chicken.  Cabot started to pick up a leg with his fingers, and I cleared my throat loudly.  He’d temporarily forgotten his etiquette.

“Can you look straight up and see the sky?” I kidded him.  “And, by the way, I didn’t notice until now that you’re drinking a Coke out of a can.  We don’t do that indoors, either.”

Cabot looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, I do have a vivid imagination.”

It’s no wonder I love that boy.  He has a wicked sense of humor, just like his Unca Steve.

*

Or like the lady used to say about her son on “Dobie Gilles,” “Such a nasty boy!”

*

When Cabot’s older brother was ready to go off to college, his parents had to pay a thousand bucks to send him to a crash course in etiquette, where he finally learned, among other things, the proper use of tableware and the true purpose of a napkin.  He’d grown up like an enfant sauvage, and we jokingly offered to teach the younger kid all of these niceties for half the price.  But Cab has visited what they call “the left coast” so often, that he really doesn’t need a formal course – only the occasional reminder.

*

Like his uncle before him, Cab doesn’t want to be an Okie.  He wants to be civilized.

*

Cab’s mother, my sister-in-law, didn’t understand at all why it’s bad form to eat with your fingers or drink a soda out of a can when at an indoor dinner table.

“Now, why is that?” she asked.

“It’s called manners,” I replied.