This Teen Is Trouble

Keeping your kids away from bad influences, plus unknown genders and unwelcome applause.

We are friends with a family who have a female friend of their teenage daughter living with them due to problems at home. This girl has shown extremely inappropriate and provocative behavior, and I don't want my 10-year-old daughter exposed to her. We leave when she arrives, but I don't want our friends to think we object to them or to their daughter. I have considered talking to the mom about this but am unsure if this is appropriate.
ANONYMOUS in Weymouth

Talk to your friends and work out a way of dealing with the situation. You certainly have the right to shelter your daughter from influences that you consider inappropriate. Stop and think, however, what kinds of "problems at home" would lead a teenage girl to persistently engage in provocative and inappropriate behavior. Got some ideas? I sure do. So go into the conversation from a compassionate place, not an accusing one. Depending on your daughter's maturity and the nature of the behavior she's witnessed, you might want to have a talk with her. No need to get graphic; just explain that sometimes people from bad home situations don't develop good social skills, and that while we don't emulate their behavior, we try to be sympathetic to them and show them, by example, a better way to interact.

I like to submit poems to literary magazines, and when I write my cover letter, I usually begin "Dear Mr./Ms. So-and-So." However, sometimes I can't figure out the editor's gender from the first name. In these cases, I'm not sure how to address the letter, and just writing "Dear Editor" gives the impression I didn't bother looking up the name. What's your take on this?
K.H. in Boston

You can always do a Google search using the editor's name and "poetry" or the name of the journal or some such) and see if you can find any clues to the person's gender. If you can't, "Dear Editor" is perfectly fine. My husband edits the sciencehumor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, and he agrees that being addressed as "Dear Editor" or even Dear Mrs. Abrahams" wouldn't prejudice him if the article submitted was a good one. "There may be some people who would get really upset at that kind of thing," he explains, "but think those people are stupid."

The most important way you can show respect for the editor of a magazine or journal is to actually read several issues of the publication and make sure that your submission is appropriate to its editorial vision. So if the literary magazine is, say, Inspirational Poems About Everyday Miracles and Baby Animals Quarterly, don't send in your 21st-century revisioning on Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. If it's Experimental Sub/Textuality, on the other hand, don't submit a classic sonnet to thy mistress's eyebrow. And hey - good luck!

I have been in theater for more than 45 years, community and professional, directing and acting. I was always told that it is improper for cast members to applaud one another at curtain call. But every time I direct a show at one particular theater, there is an actor who goes against my principles and says, "That's the way we always did it here and they even do it on Broadway." What do you think?
B.B. in Rochester, New Hampshire

I think you've got an insubordinate actor whom you need to either get under control or stop working with entirely. It doesn't matter what they do on Broadway, and it doesn't matter what's "proper" or not. (They do a lot of things on Broadway, including having grown men and women dress as felines and sing with great earnestness about kitty-cat heaven. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.) What matters is that you, the director, have made an artistic choice that one of your actors consistently flouts. Boy, if I had gone against my high school drama teacher Mrs. McClatchey like that, I'd have never eaten lunch in that cafeteria again. I'm getting chills just thinking what she would have done to me.

As an artistic choice, I don't like actors applauding during the curtain call. It seems self-congratulatory and smug; why not just drag out the cooler and start the cast party right there on stage? The only exception I would make is in cases of plays that can be deeply traumatic to watch, in which there are scenes of rape, torture, or other violence. The actors will have their own way of shaking it off afterward, but for the audience, it can be good to see the cast applaud one another. In this circumstance the mutual applause has less the feel of "Oh, we all remembered our lines. Aren't we clever?" and more of "Let me honor you for being there for me tonight during this difficult work." It can help bring the audience back to reality. So, applause during the curtain call might work for Extremities, but I wouldn't recommend it for Annie.

My Word!

In cold, rainy, or generally inclement weather, drivers should remember that they are in the shelter of a vehicle and pedestrians are not. So be extra generous about giving the folks on foot the right of way. (Thanks to reader Melissa Schlenker for this tip. Got a nifty problem-solver, pet peeve, or bit of wisdom you'd like to see in a My Word? Send it in to missconduct@globe.com.)

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Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.