This morning I was doing a postmortem review of the holiday season with a Unionville socialite, and we discussed the perennial plight of getting cornered by a frightful and garrulous bore at a party. How to escape? Of course, at a cocktail party you can look over the bore's shoulder with sudden interest and remark that a fresh plate of hors d'oeuvres is just that instant being brought in and you MUST have one. Or you can resort to the hoary empty glass ploy, saying you are parched and need a refill.
But what about when the person sitting next to you at dinner is the relentless bore? This is not a new problem, and a few generations ago they even had an accepted way to solve it: it was called "turning the table."
According to Emily Post's 1929 etiquette book, the hostess "turns from the gentleman (on her left probably) with whom she has been talking through the soup and the fish course, to the one on her right. As she turns, the lady to whom the `right' gentleman has been talking turns to the gentleman further on, and in a moment everyone at table is talking to a new neighbor."
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