A few weeks ago, a woman friend of mine bristled when I tried to help her on with her coat.

"I can do that," she said with a smile.

It wasn't a friendly smile. It looked like that smile that Sarah Palin gave Charlie Gibson when he asked her about the Bush Doctrine. It was that kind of smile.

This woman was saying, "I like you, but I'm a strong, independent woman who can take care of herself." Fine. The next time she asked if I wanted to have coffee, I said I had diphtheria. I did it with a smile, that creepy-killer smile that John McCain gave the editors at the Des Moines Register.

Last week, as I was entering a store in Freeport, six college-aged women were just behind me. I stopped and held the door. One of them stepped forward and took the door from my hand, "Please," she said, "after you."

I got it at once.

I'm no longer cool.

I'm old. I'm no longer 28 and startlingly handsome. At 28, I was George Clooney before George Clooney was born. She would have stammered then, maybe got weak in the knees. Now, I was the old guy trying to be courteous, and I was rebuffed -- not just rebuffed, but rebuffed with an ageist twist. To her, I had become Wilford Brimley. I should have tripped her.

Men of my generation, the Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden generation -- OK, the John McCain generation -- were force-fed good manners. If a woman came to the table where you were dining, you stood up. If you didn't, your mother kicked you under the table. Two pained shins and you started paying attention.

I think maybe I'll give that one up.

When we ate out in New York or Los Angeles, we almost never met anyone we knew. Living in a small town, you know everyone and everyone seems to eat at the same place. You spend so much time getting up and down, your food gets cold. So I'm giving that one up. If you're a woman and you come to my table, I'll pretend I don't see you. Of course, that won't work, because She will kick me under the table and pull the napkin from my chest.

Almost all of the old gestures are gone now. My father's generation tipped their hats at women on the street. One might have ogled with a lascivious glare, but one tipped one's hat. And, by the way, one always used "one." They kissed a woman's hand then. Try that now. Watch them wipe the hand on their skirt.

Now when I stand for a woman, I get this: "Please, what are you doing? Sit down." And it comes with that smile and the ageist twist. Sometimes it comes with a gentle pat on the back. What's next? Will they take my fork and feed me and wipe my chin?

I live with the manners Gestapo. She insists, at each dining out, that I put my napkin on my lap even though I never spill anything on my lap. I always spill it on my shirt. So I tuck the napkin into my shirt collar. She says that makes me look like a gangster at an Italian picnic. So I put it on my lap. Then I spill the gravy on my shirt.

I understand now why my father stopped going out altogether, toward the end of his life. My mother always said that it was because she wouldn't let him order more than one drink. I have to tell you: When you have to put up with all that "out in public" behavior, you need more than one drink.

I'll bet that in January, when all of this election stuff goes away, John McCain and George Bush will be smashed all the time. I know I will.

J.P. Devine is a freelance writer living in Waterville.