Modern Guru
The Age
Saturday January 17, 2009
Kate Duthie answers readers' questions about 21st-century
ethics, etiquette and dilemmas.Do we return to sender, or take it up with the dead-letter office?Several years ago, my partner and I bought a deceased estate and moved in with our young family. Today, we received what I believe is a greetings card, addressed, like many before it, to the previous, late owner. For the past three years, we've redirected all mail addressed to the dear departed lady to her son, even though many of the envelopes included a return address. Should we continue doing this? If we return greetings cards to their senders instead, should we notify them of circumstances more accurate than "address unknown"?L.G., Northbridge, NSWGetting other people's post is very annoying. I know this because a woman who lives in a neighbouring suburb to me, in a street with the same name as ours, keeps telling me. Well, it's more of a scream of frustration, really, when she gets parcels meant for us delivered to her house, and she tosses them from her car window and drives away. We still get mail for the woman who lived in our house, too. She's still alive but I always just toss anything addressed to her straight into the bin, figuring if it was important enough she would have informed the sender of her new address. You are clearly a much kinder individual than I. While I appreciate the special circumstances of your mail situation, I'm not sure this should be your job. Why hasn't the son of the previous owner told his mother's friends that she has died? Don't tell me an anxious group of white-haired ladies are still waiting for her to make up a four for bowls. Anything to do with death is tricky, isn't it? But the trouble with dying these days is it's not as final as it once was. For all you know the lady who died might actually have been cryogenically frozen, lying in a deep slumber, being pumped full of life juice in preparation for the day some potty scientist works out how to plug people into the mains to bring them back to life. Believers in reincarnation would argue the lady hasn't died at all but has simply resumed life in the body of another creature. That would explain why the neighbour's cat stares at you so intently whenever you empty your mail box. I'd have a word with the son, and tell him it's now three years that you've been receiving mail that should be redirected either skyward, to the lab or to his address. And can someone please call the bowling club. Should I bite my lip while she applies her lippy?Someone I know insists upon touching up her face, applying lippy, and sometimes even going so far as to run a comb through her hair, at the table after a restaurant meal. I think this is something that should be attended to in the privacy of the Ladies Room. Am I being precious?K.G., Brisbane, QldYour friend's obsession with her appearance could be caused by one of two things. She's either incredibly vain and likes to look her best at all times, or she's frightened to leave the table in case everyone talks about how incredibly vain she is. I'm with you: restaurant toilets are there for a reason, assuming the role of the bathroom in our homes but with much more complicated toilet-roll and soap dispensers. I can forgive the lippy reapplication, mainly because I do it myself, but your account of her hair-styling at the dinner table is making me retch. And, believe me, it's hard to type and retch. My advice, as it often is in these cases, is to step up and say something if it bothers you. Perhaps you can initiate a group excursion to the Ladies Room for a gossip and a reapplication of lippy. That way you'll have someone to help you work out how to get to the soap.
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