You are cordially invited...

"Répondez s'il vous plaît", a French phrase that translates to "reply, please." or literally "respond, if you please". It is with this meaning that invitation cards and similar documents are often marked with "R.S.V.P." It is standard practice to reply to an RSVP request whether confirming attendance or declining.

For many, many, many years, eons possibly, it was the norm to reply to an invitation as to whether you would be attending the function. Now, maybe I'm just a bit obsessive about it (okay, most likely it's me being obsessive), but there is a reason, a very, very, very good reason behind it.

I'm a planner for the most part. Dinners, parties, trips, etc...they require planning. At least for me they do. I don't want to run out of food, drinks, or end up stranded in some foreign place because I didn't know how many were coming or where I was going or wtf was going on...come one people!

So, come to think of it...I think we can directly correlate the decline in people responding to R.S.V.P.s to the "so-called" decline in society. Yup, that's it...stop responding to invitations and the whole damn world falls apart....