text: While "Talk to the Hand" is inescapably mediocre in comparison to "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", a book I found amusing, though not up-to-par to its New York Times Bestseller status, this book does have its moments. 
  
  However, I was uterrly bloody appalled at the rudeness of Lynne Truss in presuming to make a comment that, despite whatever way she meant it, ended up sounding like she thought gluten intolerance was a choice. I find it interesting that she, or at least her editors, did not further investigate the disease (which, indeed, gluten tolerance is) before publishing such a degrading remark. 
  
  Oh, yes, bloody well sorry, Ms. Truss, for invading your rude, stay-home-and-bolt-the-door causitive world with yet another irritation which, I'm sure, someone created just so you would have to sit in a restaurant and listen to someone else get special treatment for a fad diet. Let's just go and, well, obliterate a genetic disorder! While we're at it, we might as well just make the lactose intolerant drink milk. If it pleases and thanks you, Ms. Truss, we celiacs will eat cake. (Oh, bloody hell, did I just say "please"?)
  
  Despite the fact that Lynne Truss makes this world out to be such a horribly rude place, I have to wonder if she's experiencing the effects of projection. In explaining how rude we humans are, it was necessary for her to be quite rude, as well. It is not simply the celiac remark to which I refer: I also found her supermarket incident, in which a kid shouts at his mother, "I want that one, YOU EFFING BITCH!", among others, a bit offensive.
  
  As a member of both the gluten intolerant community and the younger generation so responsible for this rudeness, I was often thoroughly appalled by this book. No, my friends and I don't usually hold doors for each other, but, in general, I thank and get thanked in return for a money lend or a coffee downtown. Frankly, I find myself more often in the perpetual motion of manners with my friends, as well as strangers, than in a cycle of rudeness which includes swearing for the sake of swearing and no regard for others. I can safely say that all of my friends ignore their cell phones if we are having a conversation, or, if they must answer, they apologize profusely before going outside to talk so they do not offend the people around them.
  
  I have to argue that we are not a select group. In today's world, one sees what one expects to see; one is treated as one expects to be treated. Ms. Truss, I believe, would find that perahps if she simply lowered her expectations slightly and gave out all the respect she possibly could, she would be surprised to find that, when people are rude, she cares less because she knows that she, at least, is doing her best not to be. If she did this, maybe she would be less likely to jump all over people who are rude because she would not be so worried about her own behavior.
  
  My last complaint is this: "gluten crap"? You would think that such a sophisticated, eloquent (as she is dedicated to proving) person as Lynne Truss would have been able to find a better word to describe gluten than the third-year, am-I-not-so-cool-and-bitchin' (?) style word "crap.
  