Missed manners: Lynne Truss thinks people are getting ruder. She can shove it.

• Author: Austin, Elizabeth
• Position: On Political Books - Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door - Book Review

Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door By Lynne Truss Gotham Books, $20.00

A few nights ago, my husband was flattened by a sudden attack of vertigo. Terrified, I called our doctor. "Well, it could be a heart attack, it could be a stroke, or it could be something really scary," she said reassuringly. "Take him right to the hospital."

Within minutes, we were at the emergency room, where a cluster of security guards stood glued to the blaring football game on the television. Frantic, I started to sign in. "Speak up, please," the triage nurse barked testily above the televised din. "I can't hear you."

I helped my dry-heaving husband to the bathroom, then sat with trembling hands while the color announcer screamed friendly insults at the play-by-play commentator. Undone by the noise, I took shelter in the "kids room"--only to be joined by a young baseball fan who turned on the television and cranked up the volume so he could hear it above the iPod plugged in his ear.

Thousands of decibels later, the attendant wheeled my husband to the examining room where we spent a painfully anxious--but blessedly TV-free--night. The doctors' diagnosis, eventually, was "Hmm, that was weird. Call us if it happens again, okay?" So, I took my husband home, poured orange juice into him, and called Patient Relations to suggest that they permanently mute that dammed ER television.

"I know, ma'am," the patient rep responded with bland politeness. "Sometimes even the medical staff complains about it. But when we turn it down, somebody always turns it back up." I suggested that this was not an unsolvable technical problem. "Well you know, ma'am, some people in the emergency room are under a great deal of stress, and they want that distraction. You should have asked for a Quiet Room."

I pointed out that no one had mentioned any Quiet Rooms, and that there were no signs offering them. She replied: "Well, ma'am, then they were probably occupied. By families who were dealing with real tragedies."

Out-tragedied, I acknowledged defeat and hung up.

All of which I mention to establish that I am clearly in the target audience for Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss. By rights, I should have turned each page muttering, "You go, girl"--or, as her plain-spoken British mates would say, "Effing brilliant. Effing...