Imagine a senior, American-born couple, Jethro and Polly, who have been invited to Mar-A-Lago, and are seated at Trump’s table. Donald and Melania Trump are sitting across the table from their guests in plain view and are dressed “to-a-tee.” Jethro’s suit is an off-colored faded grey, unpressed with a lot of lint and one of his wrinkled shirts buttons is noticeably unbuttoned. His floral tie is emerald green with a grease spot laying against his too tight shirt and his belly flesh is in view of Mr. President who notices his guest, Jethro has dirt under his nails. Donald thinks to himself, “disaster.” His favorite word.
Mr. President is conversing with each guest at his table and the president addresses Jethro in conversation and asks, “What did you order, the steak or the salmon ? I ordered the salmon. They say it’s good for our heart health.”
Jethro says, “It don’t matter to me what I gets. Polly here ain’t much of a cook. She burns everything, even eggs. I’ll eat anything. I’m starving.” Polly in her too short, cheap, exposing cocktail dress comments to her husband, “well, if you’d bring home more bacon, I’d learn how to cook it. We ain’t had no good food cause we ain’t been able to afford nothin’. “
Mr. President with all of his class, nods politely and turns to conversation with Melania. His eyes are filled with anguish, but he’s able to dismiss his fleeting feeling in order to “save face,” and politely opens another conversation with other guests. Melania, charming and kind continues a little bit of conversation with Jethro and Polly. The love in her heart overlooks others imperfections. The President has class. Class, by the way, is how you treat people. The poorest person on earth living in poverty in a shack can have more class than the richest people on earth who mistreat everyone.
The waiters begin to serve the elegant dinner plates from the left side of each guest. Mr. President picks up his napkin and places it on his lap first, and the waiter fills the crystal icewater glasses from the right side around the table. The guest of honor is served first, followed by other guests, with the President being served last. It’s generally considered polite to offer food to guests before the host and hostess.
Jethro and Polly start to shove the food in fastly, holding their forks in their fists before the President or Melania are served. The President is served, and first places his napkin on his lap. Jethro, with his mouth open, full of food, sounds like a cow chewing his cud, and fails to pick up his napkin, although there is ranch dressing all over his lips and his mouth is open as he chews. Jethro finishes his food and lays the dirty silverware onto the table cloth instead of placing it in line at the right corner edge of his plate, and then he reaches across the table for the bread basket. When the waiter asks if he can pick up Jethro’s plate, he ignores him without a thank you.
Polly asks the waiter where the bathroom is, doesn’t say thank you when he answers, and pulls herself away from the table abruptly without an excuse me please. When Polly returns to the table, Jethro, while picking at his teeth, says in a loud voice with no grace and zero gratitude, “Mr. President, you’d be much better off if you’d-a-used that TV personality chef, Emeril Lagasse. He woulda “kicked the fish up-a-notch,” fosho.
The Trumps eyes meet. The President looks at this rude, ill-bred couple at their table and then stands, places his napkin to the left of his plate on the table, pushes his chair in, and says to Melania, “shall we mingle with our other guests now?” and, extends his left arm to Melania, who gracefully stands, and says to Jethro and Polly, “nice to have met you,” and then to the remaining guests at the table, “thank you for joining us, it’s been wonderful,” as they gently walk away demonstrating diplomatic composure and tact.
The Trumps reflect on this challenging interaction to learn and improve their approach in the future. Melania whispers to Donald, “remember times when we’ve been rude too, but we are surely wise now.”
You can be too. The best etiquette book published in America is “Emily Post’s Etiquette” and to learn proper English grammar is the book, “Basic English Grammar Learn by Doing” by Dr. Arun Jee. It’s wise to improve ourselves. Who knows, one day, you might be invited to Mar-A-Lago for tea.
More importantly remember what Jesus said at Matthew 4:4, “Man cannot live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The Word of God, the Bible is God’s mouth.
Always Christian with Love at annefisherfoundation.org, “Women Protecting Women and Children.”