Until Mum passed way in 1986, her next door neighbour was Pam Nathan, well known in over there in Launceston, Tasmania. She and I have remained good friends since, even though we’ve lived in places far removed from Tassie, and she once visited us in Denver when we lived there.
On Facebook today Pam posted a reminder about this acronym, FHB, standing for Family Hold Back, that her family understood and used if they had visitors and the food or beverage on offer was being stretched a bit, the kids understood they were not to just bog straight in and wolf it all up as kids can do if they love are very keen on what’s being served, they had to wait, knowing there might not be any seconds!
That strikethough reminds me of something that Grandma Padman quite often pulled us up on: if one of us said “Oh, I love that cake/meat/icecream!” or whatever, she’d say “You don’t love food – you love people. About food you say you’re partial to it, or you like it very much. I don’t recall a similar rule about food you hated, though – it’s a bit extreme to say you hate a person – or perhaps I just feel hesitant about that word because of the very high levels of divisiveness in Western socities today.
Also we learned that rather than say after a meal “I’m full!” or “I’m stuffed!” it was far more polite to say “Thank you, but I am replete.” Replete – OMG, do dictionaries still have that word in them? Maybe that was Gran yearning for the standards of a more polite yesteryear, but I don’t think I ever heard an adult speak like that, in my entire life.
Once we were in school we learned to put up our hands and wait to ask for something until the teacher acknowledged the raised hand. The most common request was probably to be allowed to go to the toilet. If we asked “Can I go to the toilet?” the answer was quite likely to be “Yes you can, but no, you may not.” It took us a while to use the correct way to ask permission to go to the bathroom: “Please may I go to the toilet?” or “May I be excused, please?” Key words may and please should be used when asking for a permission to do anything at all from someone who has authority to give you permission to do it. This is all under the heading of good manners, and once you learn them and start to become a bit mature, you realise that using them does help people get along without friction.