Are you afraid of heights?

It's one of those longstanding family jokes. Somewhere, sometime, long long ago, some public speaker asked someone if they were afraid of heights. Maybe it was even one of us, who knows, or maybe we were just in the audience. The poor soul, of course, answered no, why do you ask, to which the zippy speaker fell over himself with glee to announce, well, by golly, it appears that your zipper is...

This occurred to me yesterday as I was sitting in the meeting, face to face with one of these zipppers that had fallen victim to the forces of gravity. As my mind wandered, as it does about every 7 1/2 minutes in this sort of meeting, I tried to mentally will that zipper to its proper fully upright and locked position. Because once you've noticed something like that, no matter how hard you try to maintain eye contact and NOT LOOK DOWN, you just can't help yourself. Or at least I can't. But perhaps I'm just weak of will.

"OK, he's crossed his legs in a rather unusual way, so he's seen it and is modestly covering the offending zipper so that I don't have to keep averting my eyes."

"Just glance down that way, right, that's the way, you'll see it, come on, come ON, just look DOWN!"

"All you'd have to do is scoot your chair up to the table, sort of hunch over like you're stretching your back a bit, and just quickly, zip, up it goes!"

"Zip it Zip it Zip it Zip it Zip Zip Zip!"

The worst part is, you know that the poor dude is going to be a bit embarrassed when he finally, in a private moment, realizes that he's not been fully zipped and immediately will begin to wonder how long had it been that way, who had noticed, how embarrassing, why didn't anyone tell me?

To which I say, happy to. You just tell me what is the proper way to advise a person --not a relative, not a spouse, but someone that you don't share intimacies with and never wish to-- that their zipper is hanging out below the equator. Morsel of food on the cheek, fine, that's a softball. But what if there's something poking out of their nose, or peeking out from between their front teeth. So, dialing Miss Manners, do tell me what to do...