Table Manners

Tonight I was eating an amazingly delicious Thanksgiving dinner when I was gently reminded to use the appropriate methods of cutting/moving food. Usually, I would just stab the entire turkey segment with a fork and bite off fragments of it. However, it's apparently more polite to do some gymnastics involving a knife being supported by the fork cutting the meat like a hacksaw. It seems very much more difficult than just moving the food into my mouth in the easiest way. Similarly, placing utensils on the sides of the plate always facing a certain relative direction might look nice, but it's simpler to place all of them contiguously (in a napkin if you want) on the plate. I guess these customs just developed over time in Western civilization. Nevertheless, taking in nutrients would be far simpler if we were to abandon them.