Dear Amy: It is still early spring and various announcements and invitations have begun to arrive from south of the Mason-Dixon Line from people whom we rarely see or correspond with.
In the past two weeks, my husband and I have been asked to hold dates in June for high school graduations in Virginia and North Carolina for kids we have only seen a few times.
We also received an invite to a college graduation in Tennessee in May for a young man whom we have only seen in Christmas-card photos! I guess we wrote a memorable check for his high school graduation.
Yesterday, I got an invitation for a baby shower for a couple in South Carolina whom we met seven years ago. It took us a half-hour to figure out who the expectant parents were because we didn’t know that they lived in South Carolina. My husband and I occasionally see the future grandparents at social functions for an organization that we belong to.
When my two children graduated from high school and college, we celebrated with close family and friends who saw our kids on a regular basis.
Amy, how do we handle all of these announcements and invitations for events that everyone knows we will not attend because we live in the Northeast? Many of these people, I’m sure, believe that we have money after moving north 20 years ago to accept “big” jobs in New York City.
– Perplexed in New York
Dear Perplexed: You should do these people a favor and clip out this column and send it to them.
Then they’ll see what a rude, ungracious person you are and strike you forever from their lists.
I understand that many people who receive them think that these invitations and announcements are thinly veiled demands for money and gifts, but, as you somewhat offensively point out in your ethnocentric perspective on this, it is possible that Southerners are merely more sociable than you sophisticated Northeastern city dwellers.
My own completely subjective observation is that the Southerners I’ve come to know have never met a stranger and like to party hearty. I envy them.
You don’t have to send gifts or money to people you barely know.
But it is polite to respond to these announcements with a card of congratulations, if you can manage to swallow your attitude long enough to do so.
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