Frugality and Table Etiquette

Mario and I were discussing the need to teach our children some table etiquette. For 13 years we have served our children on plastic plates and given them plastic cups. I am kind of tired of all the plastic and all the poor manners at the table. I thought that maybe we should buy some nicer dinnerware for Sunday dinners and holidays. Maybe the nicer stuff will encourage our children to act more maturely.

So as I was discussing this with Erin the other day in the car, she wondered why they needed to learn this stuff. I told her that she and Eric are going to begin dating in a few years and she wouldn't want to embarrass herself while out with a date or even worse, her date's parents. Her response was that she wasn't going to date a guy that took her to fancy restaurants. She wants to marry someone that doesn't spend a lot of money eating out. She is looking for a guy that will eat at inexpensive restaurants for their dates. She said maybe eating out at places like Melting Pot once in a while would be ok, but not often.

I had to laugh. Mario and I would eat at Burger King (99 cent Whoppers) all the time while we were dating. We were poor college students. Even though I tease Mario about it now, I am glad that Mario took me on these cheap dates because I appreciate that he is frugal. We are a perfect pair. Now we can afford to go out to places a little nicer than Burger King, but we find ourselves at Subway quite often for their $5 footlong subs. We did recently go to Melting Pot, but only with a coupon.

We started practicing our new table manners last night. The kids walked in and I had the table set with real dishes and real glasses. They all seemed puzzled and wondered why the table was set nicely. We began with practicing using our napkin correctly. They took advantage since we were only working on our napkins and started putting their elbows on the table since we hadn't worked on that yet. I am not sure how this whole experiment is going to work out. But I did buy some really cheap China yesterday and we are going to begin using it Sunday evening.