“And if they won’t help me?”

“We’ll have to check it.”

She had a curtness and a dismissiveness that I found very unpleasant.

And she later did something even worse. During the safety demonstration, she was pantomiming along to the safety instructional. I was reading a book. Others were engaged in their own work. Suddenly, she stopped what she was doing, paused the recording, and, with her two-inch-heeled foot, kicked the newspaper of the person in the first row! She shouted, “I’m not doing this demonstration to entertain myself!”

Frankly, I worried about her blood pressure.

Carrying around anger like that is really dangerous, but I think it’s up to each of us to deal with it on our own time. I hate confrontation and am so turned off by people who insist on starting fights all the time. Some people are so insecure that they will push a confrontation at every opportunity. There are even people who at a party (often after a few glasses of something) will blurt out things to others like, “I feel like you don’t like me.”

It’s so childish, and it never ends well. Either they say that, actually, they don’t like you, and then there’s awkwardness. Or they say they do like you, but you’ve just put them in an uncomfortable position, so you’ll never know if you just coerced that answer—or if at that moment, because of the question, they actually stopped liking you.

Remember at the playground when kids would ask each other a million times, “Are you my best friend?”

After the tenth time you want to say, “Well, not anymore!”

I still remember the grade-school drama involving my oldest friend, Doug Harbison, and my new friend, Craig Smith. I felt confident enough about Doug’s friendship that I could assure Craig that he was my best friend because I thought nothing would alienate Doug. I was wrong. It really hurt Doug’s feelings, and I felt terrible.

Bad manners often come from a place of deep unhappiness. It’s almost a declaration of bad citizenship, a way of challenging the world: “Why should I be a good citizen? You haven’t been good to me!”

Frankly, in my experience, people who try to put you on the spot about your feelings are just angry with you, and they’re projecting negative feelings onto you. They want to start a fight so they have an excuse to be so upset. Often the anger is based on your aloofness. They’re thinking, Where does he get off not liking me? I’m very likable!

You know, this book started out as an etiquette book, but at times I’ve thought, Maybe it’s too tough to behave well under all the crazy circumstances modern life throws at you.

Do you know how Amy Vanderbilt, the etiquette maven, died? In 1974, she fell or jumped out of the second-story window of her East Eighty-seventh Street town house. It was mysterious. I wonder sometimes if the number of things that could go wrong between people just overwhelmed her and she lost all interest in avoiding pitfalls like open windows.

In fact, when you start thinking about how cruel people can be to one another, you wonder whether you should become an advocate not for manners but for living in a cave with a boulder rolled in front of it. Life is full of many shocking surprises and upsetting interactions. Maybe we should all opt out.

Especially because becoming a hermit brings up some great design opportunities. We can bring back the fifties bomb shelter.

My mother was very into that idea back in the day. She was looking at plans right and left and stocking up for it. I think I was in my twenties when she finally got rid of all the boxes with the gallon plastic containers of distilled water and the by-then-exploded canned food.

I didn’t care about preparing for the apocalypse, but I did love the architecture. The shelter was basically a submarine with a big periscope. The thought of a nuclear war terrified me, and I didn’t enjoy the nuclear drills we had to do at my school. I used to think, I don’t think hiding under our desks is a useful exercise. Will it really protect us if bombs fall and the whole building caves in?I was a critic even then.

Ultimately, though, I think leaving your subbasement is well worth the trouble. And what else can we do? We’re human beings. Try as we might to avoid it, and as hard as it might sometimes be to act civil, the truth is this: We need one another.

Physical Comfort Is Overrated

WHENEVER I MEET NEW people, almost without fail they say, “I was so afraid of what you’d say about my clothes!” The truth is: I really don’t take note of what other people wear unless their outfit blows my mind for good or for ill, and even in that case I will rarely say anything unless I’m asked.

When I was taping Extra!the other day, the camera guy said, “Oh God, I just know you’re going to be disappointed in what I’m wearing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re hoisting a camera and down on your knees and moving around. You need to be agile. It wouldn’t be right for you to be in a tailored suit! You’re dressed appropriately!”

I get a little shrill when I talk about it, because it seems like people are either too worried about what they have on or not worried enough. People are really intimidated by fashion, and as an educator and a fashion lover I think that’s such a shame.

Meryl Streep said in a 2009 Vanity Fairarticle that she was over trying to appeal to men. “I can’t remember the last time I really worried about being appealing,” she said.

I don’t totally believe that she doesn’t care. It is true that she’s really eschewed fashion. I think it’s smart, intellectual Meryl speaking, saying she’s too smart for style. But no one’s too smart for it. Providing we leave our cave, it matters to all of us.

When we look good, we feel better. That’s true for everyone. You feel better able to tackle the world. It’s not a good feeling going into an exam without having prepared, and it’s not a good feeling leaving the house without having dressed to be around people. Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you’ll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you’ll run into every ex you have.

The key is not being dressy. The key is being appropriate.

Someone at my neighborhood grocery store once said to me, “Wow, you really do wear jeans and a T-shirt!”

“Yes,” I said, “at the grocery store.”

It’s all about context. I wear a suit to work, to weddings, to funerals, to the theater, and to church. When shopping at the grocery store or running errands, I have been known to wear jeans, because it’s totally appropriate. The jeans fit me and are clean, and I usually pair them with a jacket, but yes, jeans!

Some people think of dressing up or being polite as a burden. They think having to wear a tie or use the right fork or send a thank-you card is a kind of shackle. To these people I say: Getting out of bed is a shackle. If you feel that way, stay in it! Invest in a hospital gurney and wheel yourself around on it when you need to go out.

I get very impatient with this whole “comfort issue” with clothing. Yes, you don’t feel as comfortable in clothes that fit you as you do in your pajamas and robe. That’s a goodthing. You’re navigating a world where you need to have your wits about you. If you’re in a lackadaisical comfort haze, you can’t be engaged in the world the way you need to be.

Would I be more comfortable in a business meeting wearing my pajamas?

No! It would feel, honestly, very weird. I would think, Where’s my IV? When do I take my next meds?