We are a less formal world today. Hardly anyone uses "the good china" anymore. Fabric napkins have given way to paper.

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“Someone set the table.”

That was the common cry that preceded dinnertime around the world.

We sat down to eat.

Together.

Even a hasty, mid-week meal of soup and sandwiches involved a placemat and a napkin. It was usually kids who set the table. Early in our table-setting careers, we were keen for the task. Later, we’d whine that, “We did it laaaast night”. But we could all do it. And set the table for company, even. Kids — all kids — knew which side of the plate to place the knife. Kids knew the convention was that the blade should be turned toward the plate. Soup spoons? They went to the right of the knife. Kids everywhere knew in which order to place the forks. That stemware — glasses of any kind — went on the right side of the plate in a certain configuration.

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Yep, there were plenty of rules and protocols. In the household I grew up in, we had to ask to be excused from the table. You sat bolt upright at the table. You made polite conversation. I’d stake my life on the fact that our dining room table never felt the weight of a single elbow. Well, no elbow that hadn’t yet achieved adulthood. And you waited for mom to be settled and served before you picked up a utensil. Those were the broad strokes.

The adults, on the other hand, were at liberty to do whatever they pleased, especially after the brandy snifters came out. I recall a night where my siblings and I sat on the staircase watching a group of decrepit adults — probably people in their 30s — dancing around a Mexican sombrero on the living room floor following........

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