We were a little surprised to find that our greatgranddaughters didn't know how to set our table. These are two bright girls and they do many things quite well. The granddaughter mothers explained that their girls would naturally not know about setting the table since they don't set the table in their house. They eat at a counter and each family member serves themselves and picks up tableware on the way to their seats.
In restaurants these days, I may get a napkin wrapped around a knife and fork but not usually a spoon. When we hosted a Chinese teenager, we got a refresher in our tableware and his.
Lynn had instruction in her high school home economics class in setting the table. The opening sequence of Downton Abbey often shows hands very carefully setting the table. I think a set table is supposed to be laid out in such a way that everything needed, or having a high chance of being desired, is at hand. I have never had instruction in setting a table and Smarty-pants, who has, thinks she knows better than me. I want my knife pushed under the righthand edge of the plate. Horrors! That is not what we were taught (like I care). I want my spoon beside the knife with the bottom tip of the spoon parallel (same distance from the table edge) as the bottom tip of the knife. I want my water glass above the knife and the wine glass to the right of the water. That is just common sense, right?
Some of the fancier restaurants like to set the silverware so that each implement is set slightly higher (farther from the table edge) than the one to its left. Now that is truly horrible and the horror should be apparent but evidently it isn't.
I considered trying to set my beloved straight on the proper way. I don't think she will accept my directions as canonical so I ventured into what the internet has to say on the subject of tablesetting that is convenient and fashionable. I realize that YouTube has probably got several videos and there may be some podcasts I could listen to on the subject. However, "how to set the table" brought up a Billion and a half results and I don't really care enough to go through even a tenth of them. That would be 150 million results and I just don't have that kind of time.
