Chew with your mouth closed, table manners are NOT optional

Does this offend you, too?  The sight of someone's partially chewed food bouncing around their mouth for all to see and enjoy.  The sounds of chomping and smacking so loud, you are forced to jam a finger in the ear closest to the guilty party. Now I realize there can be extenuating circumstances, such as a raging cold that blocks you from breathing any other way but through your mouth.  But, for the most part, there are no valid excuses for chewing like a farm animal.  There is nothing preventing you from pressing your lips together while you chew.  It's horrifying these days to go to a restaurant and see someone's teenage daughter wrangling her food around her mouth like she's afraid her lips may actually touch!  Somehow, it's so much worse to watch a girl behave like a slob at the table.  Before you go huffing and puffing and shouting about how boys can display exemplary table manners and it's just as offensive to see a boy act like a pig...hear me out.  Over the years, we've all come to expect slightly more gregarious dinner behavior from the male species.  Don't deny it.  You even have blown off such poor manners using the time-worn, "boys will be boys" blather.  I get it.  Which is why, when I see a girl, wearing more makeup than Lady Gaga, hair straightened to within an inch of its poor unhealthy life, dressed like she may be hitting the clubs after this meal, eating like a caveman...I am completely horrified.

Keeping to the topic, it's not just loud and cavernous chewing that grosses me out.  Use your utensils the way they were intended.  Your fork is not a pitchfork, your spoon is not a shovel, and your knife is not a garden hoe used for dragging your food across the plate. Seeing someone hold their fork in their fist, while shoveling food into their gaping maw is probably the most vomit-inducing sight.  People who refuse to put the spoon into their mouths and prefer the "suck it across the atmosphere" technique should probably never leave the privacy of their own homes. Your mouth is equipped to only hold the proper amount of food that is easily chewed.  This means, for those of you who enjoy the chipmunk style of eating, one fork or spoonful at a time!  Once that bite is in there, you may NOT add more food to the pile.  I don't ever want to see food shrapnel just so you can fill your cakehole to bursting.  Sandwiches are not two bite items.  Watching you shove half of a sub into your yap makes me gag.

How can I forget drinking?!  Cups are wonderful little items, so easy to use.  Yet some people can't seem to grasp the proper usage while drinking. A friend of mine likes to reference gravity when talking about drinking, so I'd like to steal that for use here.  Yes, gravity is your friend.  Tip that cup at your lips and watch the magic unfold.  The liquid pours down.  Easy as pie, right?  Oh no, not to some.  Slurping and suctioning the coffee, soda, arsenic...whatever your drink of choice...across the surface of the liquid and into your mouth is a sound that literally makes my teeth hurt.  Probably from clenching them so tightly as you gear up for next ear-shattering slurp. 

Is it asking too much when I say, keep it closed, keep it quiet, keep it neat?  If you can't manage this, and many of you cannot...I've seen and heard it...I will comment loudly enough for you to hear over your repulsive table manners, "Are you friggin kidding me right now?!?!?"