Pretty amusing.

Lenona.

http://www.buffalonews.com/life/colu...icle325123.ece

A proper postponement?

Dear Miss Manners: A few weeks ago, my husband and I invited a couple
who are neighbors to a small cocktail party, just the four of us. They
were supposed to arrive at our house at 6 p.m.

At 5 p.m. that same evening they called to ask us to postpone this
party until the following night. I replied no and I mentioned that I
had already prepared the food.

The wife mentioned that the husband had an emergency and could not
make it. I was stunned then, and I’m still stunned today. When I
looked outside, his car was parked in his spot at 6:15 p. m. I don’t
know how to react to this. To me, she should have maybe showed up for
a short time to show us that this reason was legitimate and he could
have joined us later.

I spoke to her later and she appears like nothing happened and does
not care that we lost hundreds of dollars worth of food and the time
it took us to prepare the party. This has never happened to me in 50
years. I had people cancel the day before, the morning of but never
one hour before. How would Miss Manners react?

Gentle Reader: With amazement that cocktail food for four people could
cost hundreds of dollars. What were you serving—buckets of caviar?

The answer is that while your neighbors were wrong to treat the
occasion so lightly, you are treating it rather heavily. Stopping by
for drinks with the neighbors does sound like a casual event that
could easily be postponed, in contrast to an elaborate cocktail party,
which is presumed to involve major preparation and a goodly number of
guests. Had you invited them for dinner perhaps they might have taken
the invitation more seriously.

But it is open to you to make your point by inquiring sympathetically
about the emergency—is he all right? Is there anything you can do to
help?

Just please do not admit to spying on his car. This proves nothing, as
he could have been taken away in an ambulance, but is the sign of a
creepy neighbor.