Prep School Manners

I don't know if this is a compliment or not.

Do you take Prep?

Must've gone to W&M because no one from UVA has manners.

Were you wearing a blazer with an insignia?

If you went to UVA just say it… it’s far more elitist than other flagships so just own up to it.

It means your date is a big weirdo, OP. I think he was trying to pay you a compliment for showing good manners, but I don't know anyone who would express it that way.

I also sense he was trying to suss out your socioeconomic background in a way that should raise red flags. He's either an irredeemable snob who will attack the moment your "manners" falter in his eyes, or he's a social climber and potential gold digger looking for his next mark.

RUN.

I went to William & Mary. It is prestigious enough, but not like the New England colleges.

R6 I think he was trying to give me a compliment, but it didn't come out right. He might be trying to figure out my socioeconomic class. My family is more than okay, but it is not like it is my personal money. It is not like I'm a Rockefeller or an Astor.

Surely it means your date is an Upson or a Bixler.

Is this what they call a humble brag?

Shiloh has prep school manners [italic]and[/italic] Montenegro style.

Well that’s a step down on school roster—maybe he was on to something.

I'm not trying to brag! I was just confused!

I was kidding

So, should I see him again?

William & Mary is not Ivy League

[quote] So, should I see him again?

I’d ask Mrs. Garrett.

I’d offer you some airs but you’re already putting them on.

It means he thinks you’re Klassy. Did you suck his dick without the benefit of chainlink fencing?

R15 W&M is considered a "Public Ivy" along with Miami, U Cal system, Michigan, UNC, Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and Vermont.

Are you a Warbler?

R19 Georgia?

He's calling you snooty or that you put on airs, OP.

So you can't recognize a douchebag before you go on a "date" with one?

I hope this is an especially silly tale.

Because, if not....

R19 is posting from the 80s —that’s an old, old list. The more you know.

Reasonable folks can agree that, across the board in all fields (graduate and undergraduate) Berkeley, Ucla, Michigan and Virginia are the top tier of public schools…and in that order. Then there’s the others—all excellent in their own right.

Miami in Ohio?

R19 that’s not a particularly impressive list of schools.

R15, OP never said he went to an Ivy. "Public" was obviously a qualifier. And he's not humble-bragging.

OP, I went to a prep school in the 80s and the manners were no different from public school, except the students wore espadrilles and blucher mocs. The first names were more traditional. Not a Stacy or Tracy or Tammy to be found. A few Muffy types.

He was impressed you didn’t do a line of meth at dinner.

R27 then public certainly should have been in quotes

Cornell’s schools of Agriculture, Labor Relations and Human Ecology receive funding from the state and are administratively affiliated with SUNY.

Those schools could plausibly called public ivy

Did he disapprove? Did he want you to rub your dinner in your hair?

Were you free-bleeding, OP?

RFK Jr, that absolute hard-to-look-at-or-listen-to loon, went to UVA. He has atrocious manners. Absolutely horrifying.

We called William & Mary, The University of Suicide. Plus once of the most boring schools ever, maybe that's why so many students just check out.

[quote] We called William & Mary, The University of Suicide.

Why?

No R31. Cornell is considered an Ivy, just Ivy. It literally is in the Ivy League. Literally!

How many layers of shirts were you wearing and anything monogrammed?

R38 I was wearing jeans, a button down, and a blazer. Normal first date/casual attire.

From your conversation, I think you (OP) are almost -but-not-quite absolutely top-drawer

[quote] Surely it means your date is an Upson or a Bixler.

[quote] From your conversation, I think you (OP) are almost -but-not-quite absolutely top-drawer

R40 thank you? I try to listen and be kind to everyone. What is wrong with standing up to shake someone's hand or holding the door open for someone?

I'd rather talk about Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy than Beyonce and Colleen Hoover.

OP, I don’t know what your date meant by that or if it was a compliment or not. Perhaps he is insecure about his economic background and was trying to see how you would respond?

Either way, what he said puts you in an awkward situation. What did he expect you to say?

I’ve never been accused of having “prep school manners” but I’ve been accused of being wealthy, which I am not. When I assure people that I’m not an aristocrat or whatever they think I am, people get strangely defensive.

You're so ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you?

I hope r19 is joking.

Humblebrag, OP?

I can literally hear him saying that R44.

Was the date a pig OP? That might have been a dig from him because he felt pressured work so hard not be his usual water buffalo self while eating or whatever you were doing and control himself.

[quote] I went to a prep school in the 80s and the manners were no different from public school, except the students wore espadrilles and blucher mocs.

R28 Blucher mocs? Were they, by any chance, made of horse hide?

Dr. FrankenSTEEN

[quote]I went to William & Mary. It is prestigious enough, but not like the New England colleges.

Okay . . . You're originally from Texas (immediately minus 3 points); you couldn't get into an Ivy League college despite the fact your parents tried to bribe your way in (minus another 3 points); somehow you were able to finagle your way into William & Mary via parent graft, once again, only successful this time (minus an additional 2 points).

Face it, OP: You're a LOSER and now you're coming to DL to prop up your pathetic ego.

When Ann Coulter was an undergrad at Cornell she was on a constant soapbox about the deplorable proles at Cornell's statutory colleges. NOT IVY NOT IVY NOT IVY. Meanwhile everyone was perfectly content to have the very smart and cute farm boys on campus. And 1/3 of the Labor students flipped their politics senior year and went on to the top 5 law schools, in fact mostly Harvard.

Nowadays a bourgeois or very rich kid with impeccable manners is rare. You find this more often in kids raised in "bedrock" good and humble families with some faith, of whatever stripe. I also notice it in the high-functioning high-IQ neuro-divergent. Because they study and learn ALL the social mores in their desire to fit in and make it.

The way kids usually develop great manners is that they grow up in a home (or homes) where someone with great manners is constantly present, modeling such manners and correcting now and then. So this can be a parent or grandparent or servant. Kids who grow up in homes with a few generations present and with an adult (or adults) who care about manners is going to learn manners. Same with morality. It doesn't have much to do with money. Upper middle-class and rich kids can grow up with an awful lot of independence and nobody really paying close attention or caring enough to teach social civility.

R49 = NOK. Blucher Moc is a contemporary term for boat shoes or Topsiders, gramps.

R51, she has a particular fixation on Keith Olbermann's education.

Oh god that crazy bitch is STILL on that soap box? Sheesh! Nobody would fuck her and we would head down a different path if we saw her on the Quad.

She and Laura Ingraham at Dartmouth were part of that new Ivy League fascism waves of the 80s. With conservative newspapers and extreme anti diversity and anti P.C. - "politically correct" - which was "woke" before woke.

The think with Coulter is so much of it is performative and she has a private, limited, progressive side. I think it's a personality disorder.

the thing...

R54 contemporary? Oh my sides😝

Blucher has been a common shoe style for 200 years.

I know boat or deck shoes and Topsiders! I wore them all the time. I’m apparently too old for the current vernacular.

For the numnut expert on contemporary shoe words…

FOR FUCKS SAKE OP

HE WAS FISHING TO SEEIF YOU HAVE FAMILY MONEY

JC do you have Aspergers or something?

Nobody spoke of "blucher mocs" in the 70s and 80s although they certainly existed.

Stop pretending it’s a new term. It ain’t. Full stop.

Stupidity is not a good look on you.

Reading skills? I didn't claim it's a new term. At least I meant to explain that it's contemporary in use. Most people if a certain age wouldn't know it.

Anyway, distraction. Bye

And you’re wrong—because it is not a contemporary use. Its use goes way, way back…before you were even dumping in a diaper.

nope. not in the venacular of the hoi polloi

Never heard of blucher mochs, we called them docksiders in the 80s. Don't really care what the kids are calling things these days.

Vicious trollops

I thought there was something wrong with my computer but it turns out I'd just left this thread open and the hissing was audible!

R68, this is not a new term.

R28 here - very sorry for triggering the Blucher Moc Wars! I just remember a lot of kids wearing them--mostly girls. The sporty tomboy look was really big for 80s girls, and the bluchers seemed a part of the uniform, often worn with Bennetton sweaters and Guess jeans.

Is he from an 80s movie?

Fair isle sweaters and clogs —late 70s sorority look

[quote] Blucher Moc is a contemporary term for boat shoes or Topsiders, gramps.

R54 I know. My post was an attempt at humor based on Frau Blucher’s name scaring the horses in “Young Frankenstein.”

Actually, I’m old enough to be a great-gramps!