Bring Back Wendy Ward's Charm School

I was cleaning out my closet and I had some books stored away - one was my Wendy Ward Charm book:

In addition to selling clothes, appliances and electronics, Montgomery Ward used to offer a charm school at their location in Evergreen Plaza (yes, this really was a while ago) and my cousin and I were dispatched there so that when we finally hit the real world, we wouldn't reduce the rest of our family to shaking their head and making them wonder where they went wrong....

But where is a service like that for today's pre-teens? Where are my nieces going to go for training the likes of which you'll only see in "Gigi"?

At the time I thought it was a little silly - I was already walking and talking so didn't I obviously know how to do it?? I thought that I was sitting in chairs just fine until I was corrected on the art of holding one's knees together, sitting easily rather than falling or collapsing, and the importance of shaking hands and looking people in the eye.

You take these things for granted at your own peril.

I spend hours every week working with young people who are trying to find a summer job, and about a quarter of the time is spent reminding them to smile - we aren't trying to kill them, just ask if they have reliable transportation and see if they can work with the public long enough to get their money and make them want to come back the next day.

Everybody needs to know how to shake hands confidently, walk without slumping, look people in the eye without getting self conscious and speak without mumbling. My work with teen-agers is as much about that as it is about anything else, but we can't do it alone.

The classes about how far apart your eyebrows should be and how to select a dress that won't make your grandparents blush - priceless!

Learning how to accept a date and a compliment with giggling uncontrollably and how to be honest but not brutally so (OK, I might have slept through that session actually)is more important that reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" which is a little further up the scale, but takes for granted that you already mastered the fundamentals.

We need more fundamentals here - maybe that's why people are falling in the customer service department.