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WESTSIDE WEEKLYAt this etiquette class at Horace Mann Elementary School in Beverly Hills last week, Eric Arzoian, 10, awkwardly pushed a triangle-shaped bite of waffle into his mouth using a fork he held in his left hand.
"We do it differently at home," said Eric, who was perplexed because he is used to cutting his food, putting his knife down and taking the fork with his right hand before using it to eat.
But Beverly Hills' new etiquette master, Maggie O'Farrill, prefers children unlearn the American style of utensil use in lieu of the continental method used in europe.
"[The American style] is much noisier in a large room," and is therefore bad for ambience, O'Farrill said.
Recently hired by the Beverly Hills Recreation and Parks Department, O'Farrill, 50, who lives in the South Bay, teaches special etiquette classes at elementary schools in the city, though the classes are open to people from all over Los Angeles. The class is for children age 7 to 12 and costs $70 for Beverly Hills residents and $88 for non-city residents.
Chris Best, senior recreation supervisor for the city Recreation and Parks Department, said the city decided to offer the classes because so many parents requested it. And the children seem to respond, despite having to attend two, three hour lessons.
Indeed, O'Farrill is so congenial it's hard to imagine anyone she couldn't disarm with politeness.
The niece of the former Irish consul general to Mexico, O'Farrill grew up in Mexico, City going to political social affairs where good manners were of the utmost importance.
When she was 11, her mother, Margarita O'Farrill, move the family to Los Angeles when she got a job as an etiquette expert in local Spanish broadcast media, later opening a self-title etiquette school downtown.
"You have five seconds to make a good first impression," Maggie O'Farrill told her class of eight children last week, "Always smile, make eye contact, say 'hello,' ask the person's name and call them by their name. A person's favorite word is their name."
O'Farrill explained to the children the pecking order of handshakes: the older person always offers their hand to the younger person and the girl to the boy, but the rules change when there are titles involved.
Males should always stand up from the table when shaking hands, women should only stand up when they're meeting someone who is a president, a religious leader or someone very old.
"What about a celebrity?" queried Tatiana Broukil, 8. "If Shaquille O'Neal wanted to shake my hand would I stand up?"
"No," responded O'Farrill.
Children must overcome a natural inclination to talk only about themselves in conversation, she told the class.
"Ask questions, listen, ask a few more questions on the same subject," she said.
"I like the beach too!" one child yelled out during the listening exercise, before realizing he has just broken the rule.
Other exercises include how ladies should walk and proper phone etiquette.
Parents, Do your children do this at the table?
Though some may find that Angelenos are polite, compared to infamously rude New Yorkers- you never know when someone really wishes you would just drop dead, some from foreign countries feel etiquette lessons here are long overdue.O'Farrill's classes recently garnered the attention of The London Times, whose readership is famous for touting their proper behavior over the American barbarians: "Children who do the right thing; California children are abandoning the beach in favor of etiquette lessons," the headline reads.
The article goes on to describe Los Angeles as "the kind of place where even the children have full social diaries and are ferried from one engagement to the next in gas-guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles. When the diary is empty there is always skateboarding, surfing and splashing around in backyard swimming pools."
The article goes on to say, "It seems incongruous that in the land of the hamburger, children should be learning evolved dining manners."
But some of the children in O'Farrill's class are familiar with food other then hamburgers.
When asked where is his favorite place to eat, Eric responded by asking, "Which Cuisine?"
"Mine is Le Petit Four on Sunset," chimed in etiquette classmate Blake Broukhil 10. "They know my dad there."
