Dear June,

Since the start of this pandemic, I have eaten more and exercised less, and have gone from a comfortable size 10 to a tight size 16. In July and early August, when the world seemed to be opening up again, I did get out and move around more, but my destinations often included bars and ice cream shops, and things only got worse. I live in a small apartment with almost no closet space. I know part of this is in my mind, but it often seems that my place is bursting at the seams with “thin clothes.”  I feel as if there is little, if any, chance I will ever be a 10 again, at least not before the 10s in my closet fade and/or go out of style. Should I just throw out all my pre-pandemic clothes?

—Growing in Greenville

Dear GiG,

I wish I knew more about what being a size 16 means to you. Are you comfortable at your present size? Is your current weight a health concern? If you are satisfied and healthy, and really need the space, by all means toss (by which I mean donate) your 10s and 12s, maybe even your 14s.

But you say that things “only got worse” in July and August, which makes me think that you see your new size as an issue and would be happier if you were thinner and fitter. It also sounds as if you harbor at least vague hopes of doing something about this — losing some weight and getting in some exercise at some point, if not going down three sizes any time in the near future. If that is true, I suggest that you hold on to most of the 14s and at least of some of the 12s you would actually like to wear if they fit.

The 10s I am not so sure about. In your place I know I would want to keep at least one or two favorites, especially any expensive ones, as aspirational garments: “Some day I will fit into that perfect wool challis pencil skirt again and not have to shell out another $150.00.” I have also found, sadly, that our best clothes are often our tightest ones, the special-occasion outfits we dieted to fit into or the classics we splurged on once we reached a long-term weight-loss or fitness goal. It can be deflating, and cost-ineffective, to toss them.

True, I can see how having clothes in three different too-small sizes could feel oppressive, and how the smallest ones might just seem to be taunting you. Do what feels right. But I speak from experience when I tell you that a cache of attractive smaller-size clothes can be a real incentive to keep on track once you start dieting or working out. Twenty years and much yo-yo-ing down the road, I still remember the thrill of fitting into a pair of rust-colored silk pants I never thought I’d wear again: it is joy that passeth even Camembert and Talenti.

You say your living space is small. That is indeed a problem. Do you have a relative or friend with attic space? A childhood room whose closet you can stuff? I am a great fan of (free) remote storage, which has the added advantage that, if you decide that you really do want to let the items in question go, you may be able to arrange things so that you never even have to look at them again. Remote storage may also provide you with a useful prod down the road – if, say, your friend leaves town or your parents downsize. At that point you may realize that you’ve totally forgotten about your stored clothes and never missed them or, at any rate, no longer want them. Perhaps you’ve stabilized at a 16 or higher, and can live with that. Or perhaps you’d be able fit into some or all of these smaller clothes now, but have become prosperous and picky enough to do without a bunch of hand-me-downs, even when you are the one handing them down.

Those storage bags where you suck all the air out with a vacuum cleaner are another option. I really love making my blouses and bedding look like enormous potato chips, and it is truly impressive how thoroughly you can flatten almost anything soft – although I confess that, in my case, vacuum-wrapping stuff usually turns out to be the last step before Goodwill.

Marie Kondo and her ilk would probably be aghast at my shillyshallying and tell you to make a clean sweep, toss everything, and experience life-changing magic. I can actually see how chucking all your under-16s might be quite satisfying, and don’t exactly advise against it. I just want you to bear in mind that people whose weight is stable, especially if they are thin people, and very especially if they are thin people with money, don’t have a clue about why the rest of us save clothes we may not be able to wear just at the moment. It’s like the people who tell you that nobody needs more than thirty books. I mean, sheesh.

Besides, your asking whether you should “just” throw out all your pre-pandemic clothes sounds to me less like a desire to simplify your life and more like defeatism. I may be wrong; as I said, you may be fine with your size, and/or seriously oppressed by those space-eating clothes. You may be living in a small space totally by choice and have plenty of money, in which case getting rid of all your smaller clothes would mean only that you would have to shop for all new ones some day, a prospect many women actually enjoy. But my guess is that some mild post- (well, sadly, mid-to-late at best) pandemic depression is part of your equation.

I know: lots of factors, no clear answer. But I hope I’ve given you some useful ideas. My guess is that you’ll arrive at a compromise, saving at least a few of your intermediate-size clothes against the time when you do start moving more and eating better as this pandemic finally winds down. Having some old 14s and 12s around will at least ensure that you have a few clothes that fit while you shop for new ones, maybe even try some on in real live stores.

—June

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Dear June,

I have a childhood friend, Dora, whose mother died suddenly a few weeks ago.  Dora lives in our home state halfway across the country, as did her mom, but I attended the funeral on Zoom. I also made a donation to the charity suggested in the announcement, and sent Dora a beautiful card enclosing a long letter full of memories, condolences, and some advice I thought might be helpful.

Since then I have heard nothing from Dora acknowledging my card or thanking me for my donation. I have called her twice and left voicemails, and last week I emailed her. Still nothing.

Am I right to be perplexed and little disappointed by this?  How should I handle the situation?

—Let Down in Lansdale

Dear Let Down,

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the emails and voice mails you sent your bereaved friend were to express concern and sympathy, not to imply any criticism, even the passive-aggressive, “just making sure you got my letter and donation” kind.

I doubt that you are “right” to be perplexed. Many people in the early stages of grief prefer their own company, or that of their family and closest friends. I don’t know how often you and Dora communicate under ordinary circumstances, but unless you usually get in touch with each other at least weekly and ramp things up dramatically in the case of major life events, it is not especially strange that she’s not ready to talk to you about how things are going, and hasn’t been up to writing notes or emails.

If her conduct does seem out of character, and in a way that hints at emotional trouble, you could try getting in touch with one of her family members or local friends. But it sounds as if you are concerned about the more specific issue of her not acknowledging your card and donation. To this I can only say:  Seriously?  Don’t you have better things to be “perplexed and a little disappointed” about?  Your friend recently lost her mother without warning. Please cut her some slack.

In any case, strict etiquette no longer seems to require individual acknowledgement of sympathy cards, or any cards. My more traditionalist acquaintances do reply to handwritten condolence cards and letters with some sort of snail mail, either a personal note or a general, printed card of the “Mary Smith’s family thanks you for your kind expression of sympathy” variety; but answering sympathy cards and notes has become optional. This is as it should be. Grieving people should do what helps them most: replying to sympathy messages may be a welcome distraction and a way to stay connected to others, or it may feel like just another dreaded death-connected ordeal.

In the case of donations, it is customary for a family representative to acknowledge the gift, although sometimes the recipient organization takes on this role. If you are worried that your donation was not received, or that Dora was never notified that you sent it, there is certainly no harm in contacting the organization directly. But it is not classy at all to do anything that might come across as judging a recently bereaved person for not being bereaved in the right way. Nor do you ever want to chide an adult for insufficient gratitude.

I suggest that you keep calling Dora at regular intervals to ask how she’s doing and say that you’d love to hear from her. Emails are nice, too — maybe you have some more childhood stories you could recall, or some photos you could scan and attach –as are cards and letters. But try very hard not even to hint at disappointment. And try not to feel it, either. It is such an enervating emotion. If you feel a bout of disappointment coming on, jump out of your chair, play your favorite upbeat music, and start dancing.

June

P.S. That advice you “thought might be helpful” may be problematic. You would be amazed how many people do not welcome unsolicited advice right after their mothers die, and this might help explain why Dora has been in no hurry to get back to you.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

A note to my readers:

Here are a few more coronavirus-related letters. Knowing what I know now, I would have submitted them all at once, a few weeks ago, instead of spacing them out. Things have changed so quickly since that first batch: problems like nagging mothers and the niceties of social-distancing behavior may seem petty and quaint as compared to the deadly-serious questions and sweeping protests following the murder of George Floyd. I will submit my second batch of letters now, but humbly, in hopes that they may provide a moment of entertainment for those of you who are taking a break from weightier matters, and that they may still be of use to those of you who are still worried about contracting the virus during normal daily activities.

By the way, I do think we should still be worried – unless we live in New Zealand or Antarctica —and behave accordingly. Police brutality, social unrest, and a long-overdue focus on racial injustice have, quite rightly, been the lead stories this past week. And the virus has apparently peaked in some places. But there are still plenty of new cases and new deaths, and the same people are still at high risk. So please guard against slacking off.

On that note, I will preface my batch of older letters with a very recent one:

Dear June,

I want to march and bear witness. This feels like the moment America has been waiting for. I am at high risk for the novel coronavirus (68 years old, high blood pressure) and my wife is at even higher risk. What should I do?

Terribly Torn

Dear TT,

Back when I was a wee tad studying Ethical Theory, we used to talk about how hard it is to maximize two variables (like achieving the greatest good for the greatest number). It is equally hard to combat multiple catastrophes. Ironically, I happened to be discussing this very problem last week while dog-walking with the editor of this very magazine, when we were hit by something called a derecho — which I later learned is sort of like a mini-tornado that moves in a straight line — and had to run for cover with our dogs, like so many Dorothys and Totos. We made a snap decision that racing into my car to avoid gale winds, flying branches, and toppling trees made more sense than avoiding enclosed spaces and staying six feet apart.

What I’m saying is that you have to weigh your catastrophes and how best to combat them. Knowing so little about your situation, I hesitate to advise you either way. But I will give you three overall factors to consider. First: Is there a way you can march in relative safety? I can imagine circumstances where coronavirus risk would be minimal, say at a small local march, very likely to be peaceful, in an open area, early in the day, in a location that’s accessible on foot or by your own personal bike or car.

Second: If you do not think that you can march without risk of close personal contact, much less disorder and violence, is marching the best way for you to work for change? For those of us who have a long history working for change, it is hard not to be a public part of history. But you have to stay healthy and alive if you want to be of long-term assistance. Ask yourself whether you can’t do more by working steadily from home or some other safe place, at least for the time being. You may have special skills to offer. You may, despite being a reader of literary magazines, even have some money you can send to the NAACP, or BLM and BLM-sponsored organizations, or the swing-state candidate of your choice. You can certainly make calls, send letters, and importune your friends and family, either on your own or on behalf of worthy organizations and political candidates.

Third: Bear in mind that, when you put yourself at risk, you are also risking the health and even the lives of others, not just your wife but also those who may have to take care of you. Where I live, hospital and other health-care workers are still asking people to stay home when they can, and I am sure that goes at least double for high-risk people. And there is evidence that the virus has a disproportionate impact on black health-care workers.

Whether or not you march, I hope you take heart at the sight of so many brave and determined younger people who are out there protesting. With them around, we may get through this.

—June

Dear June,

I see that you are back with us and willing to handle questions of coronavirus ethics and etiquette. I have two for you, both from a walk I took around my neighborhood today.

Here’s the first one: A woman (wearing a mask) passed by me on the sidewalk carrying an infant who was also wearing a mask. Isn’t this dangerous? Isn’t that too young for masks? Is it child abuse? Should I have stepped in and said something? Called 311?

And the second one: A few blocks later, as I was passing my bank, I encountered an elderly gentleman trying to open the door to the ATM vestibule, which requires a card swipe. He clearly didn’t know which end of the card to swipe and, besides, that door is unusually hard to open even when you’ve successfully swiped. As I watched him struggle, I debated with myself about what to do. After a while, I decided to help. I motioned him to stand away from the door, but he didn’t understand, even when I asked, politely. After a lot of back and forth, I just stepped up to the door, into his space, and swiped, and opened it, letting him inside. Was I putting him or myself at unnecessary risk?

—Man-about-town

Dear MAT,

According to the CDC, children under two should not wear masks, “due to risks of suffocation.” The case you mention may fall under some rare exception, say if the infant was severely immunocompromised and was being rushed to a nearby hospital while wearing a properly-positioned N-95. But this seems wildly unlikely, and anyway your letter implies otherwise. So yes, the situation is dangerous, and the baby is too young. (When a baby absolutely must be in a situation without proper protections and social distancing, the CDC recommends using a baby carrier and covering it with a cloth, always keeping the cloth in sight.)

If you ever see a masked baby again, I urge you to speak up—be nice: most of us are doing our best—and say that you’re sorry to intrude, but that the CDC says masks are unsafe for kids under two. Be sure to keep your own mask on and stay at least six feet away. If the person with the infant disagrees or doesn’t believe you, ask them if they would please call their pediatrician just to be sure. Normally I warn people against being officious, and I have a deep personal aversion to making a scene, but a little life might be at risk here.

I am guessing that most people would remove the mask, or at least appear to be thoughtful and extra-vigilant as they walk away. In that case I would not call 311 or anybody else—especially if the baby is in a front-carrier or being held by the adult such that the adult has what the CDC calls “a direct view,” not in a stroller or backpack where the adult might not notice any distress until too late.

I doubt whether this case amounts to child abuse. Neglect, just conceivably, depending on the circumstances. Misplaced vigilance or simple mistake, most likely. Not that characterizing it matters at this point.

Now on to the elderly man outside the ATM vestibule. I would like to know more about this. How long did you wait? Was the man wearing a mask? Were you?

Since you do not mention taking his card, and you do mention that this was also your bank, I assume that you swiped with your own card, and that neither of your touched each other. So far so good.

And were you both wearing masks? If not, I would have advised you to walk on by the bank (or stay put, but at a six-foot distance, if you had also been hoping to get to the ATM). This is especially true if you were the unmasked one because, as we have all heard a zillion times, the purpose of everyday non-respirator masks is to protect other people, not oneself, and it would be highly irresponsible for you get in the space of an elderly, and therefore high-risk, person without proper protection.

But let us assume that you were both masked—in which case the risk was of course greatly minimized, but still present. Was it necessary for you to move into that sacred six-foot radius?

Since the vestibule required card entry, I am assuming that the bank was closed, so the elderly man could not rely on any help from a bank employee, which might have been slightly safer (if only because of the employee’s being on the other side of the door).

Okay: it’s just you, him, and the door. Separate card: check. Masks: check. And, unless you were at a bank inside a mall, or trying to get into a vestibule within a vestibule, I assume you were both outside. According to the latest research, transmission from brief non-contact exposure to another person in an outdoor setting is minimal.

Bur does the need outweigh the risk? That’s the hard one. I remain unconvinced that the man would not have figured things out eventually. I mean, there are only four ways to stick an ATM card into an ATM. I am really clumsy and a terrible guesser where card swiping is concerned, and even I muddle through if left alone.

It also sounds as if he never actually asked you to swipe him in. There was a lot of motioning going on, but I get no clear sense that he wanted any assistance. Of course, he may have been totally confused and disoriented, but an amazing number of older people do have their wits about them. And if he really was that confused, he probably should not have been in at the ATM withdrawing money on his own anyway, assuming he could figure out how to do it.

If I were you, I would have waited longer, until the man ether got inside by on his own or began to walk away in disgust, in which case I would have been able to open the door at a safer distance, wave him in, and skitter away as he neared the entrance, taking care to hold the door long enough so as not to knock the poor fellow out cold when I let go.

But reasonable people can differ on this one, I am sure. You did a kindly-meant—if perhaps just a bit condescending—thing, with what I am guessing was a good result: the man got inside and I bet nobody caught anything from your ten seconds of shared outdoor space.

Dear June,

I am a technical writer (divorced, no kids) and live alone. My city is still under a stay-at-home order and is likely to be for at least two more weeks, maybe longer if the numbers start moving up again.

My problem is that my elderly mother, who also lives alone on the other side of the city, has been focusing her coronavirus worries on me. She is convinced that I am taking all sorts of stupid risks and calls to nag me on a daily basis.

But, June, I am being really careful and don’t think I deserve this. Since the stay-at-home order came down about a million years ago, I have not gone to a restaurant, beach, or any crowded situation. I walk my dog, and sometimes take a socially-distanced walk with friends, always in a mask, and I shop maybe once a week with gloves and a mask and sanitizer and all that stuff. I don’t let anybody into my house except my boyfriend and my best friend, and she does not let anybody into her house except her boyfriend. I work exclusively from home these days, and all my meetings and conferences are remote. I wipe down everything that comes into the house. I wash my hands at least ten times a day and recite an entire Shakespeare sonnet every time (116, 18, or 29). I have not had to refill my gas tank in two months. In fact, the only person I ever visit is my mother, and now—although she wants me to come by at least twice a week—she won’t let me inside her house, so I just stand there while she nags and worries on the porch.

How can I get her to back off on the nagging?

—Irritated

Dear Irry,

You sound as if are doing most things right. Assuming that you are not at high risk for the virus, in which case I would suggest food delivery out of an excess of caution, your trips outside the house all seem fine, and the nagging unwarranted in that area. You also seem to be doing a commendable job sanitizing your house and yourself.

It is the visits from your BF and BFF that concern me, and they concern me enough so that, if I were your mother, I might nag you, too. You do not tell me whether you, your boyfriend, your friend, and her boyfriend (let’s call those last three Max, Ella, and Leland) are truly a closed coronavirus “pod.” Is your boyfriend Max in close contact with anybody other than you? Housemate, family, coworkers?  If so, you have to include each of these contacts, and all their close contacts, and so on, as possible sources of infection. The same is true of Leland, of course: if he is in contact with anybody other than Ella, you should be wary of him—and of Ella, since she sees him. Don’t forget that it is possible to have COVID-19 and be a “silent spreader”—a source of infection yourself even if you haven’t yet, or don’t ever, develop symptoms. Unless you and Ella and Max and Leland really are a closed system, all four of you pose some risk to other people, and to one another, no matter how healthy you currently feel.

The principle is pretty much the same for COVID-19 as for STDs: you have to consider every contact’s partners’ partners, and their partners, and so on. The big difference of course, is that the virus is transmitted far more easily, and in many more ways. Short of staying behind closed doors at all times—which, for most of us, is harder to manage than avoiding unprotected non-monogamous sex—we can never be absolutely sure we are safe. But we can be reasonably sure if we take the precautions you already take, and strictly limit our at-home contacts. Please take care.

Not that any of this answers your question, which was not how to avoid getting the virus, or whether you have in fact been taking the appropriate precautions but, rather, how to keep your mother from nagging you. I chose to start with the issues behind the nagging because I want you and your friends to stay safe.

But I may also have been trying to avoid your question because maternal nagging is such an intractable problem. And nagging based on fear for your kid can be practically Pavlovian. Parents start worrying about their kids about 20 seconds after the positive pregnancy test and, even though this virus seems to be sparing most younger people for the time being, there is still enough peril out there—medical, economic, social, ecological, political, you name it—to make any parent worry. And when parents worry, they nag. I should know, since I am one of them.

My guess is that the best you can do about your mom’s nagging is to remind her of all the precautions you are already taking and, perhaps, point out that your chances of becoming seriously sick through the virus are vastly less than hers. You can demonstrate your familiarity with CDC and local guidelines and how well you follow them. And you can, I hope, reassure her now, or soon, on the closed-pod issue, if that is something she nags about. If not, for God’s sake don’t remind her.

Most important, just try to go easy on her, and at least pretend to listen to any advice she has to give. She may not have a lot to do except fuss and fret about you and any other precious, indispensable people in her life. I hope that there are a few, so the nagging gets spread around a bit.

By the way, your mom is being cautious, but properly so, about your staying outside her house when you visit. (See “silent spreader,” above.) A quick trip inside, disinfecting as you go and staying masked, probably would not cause any harm, but why take the risk without good reason?

One last point: I am a big fan of Shakespeare’s sonnets and applaud your using them as your hand-washing accompaniment. How long can a person sing “Happy Birthday” twice without starting to doubt the merits of personal hygiene? (These days I usually lather my hands to political prose, like the Preamble to the Constitution and the two chunks of the Gettysburg Address I can remember, all of which play out at about 25 seconds.)

I also admire your three sonnet choices. But I believe that, after several months of this, it is time for you to branch out. Learn two or three new ones now, while you have the time. I love #8, for some reason, maybe because it’s about music, and is itself musical. Also #130, especially “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.” #29 (“When in disgrace…”) is great to declaim, and #98 is both lovely and topical, since we missed out on spring this year. But I would stay away from anything where he talks about Time in capital letters, and of course avoid #60, where our minutes hasten to their end.

With five or six sonnets in your quiver, you should be prepared for any pandemic.

But perhaps I digress. Stay safe, and try to visit your mom on windy days, which will help both to disperse viral droplets and modulate the sound of nagging.

Dear June,

As if it weren’t upsetting enough to fear for my life and my loved ones and the future of democracy and how long my employer is going to be in business, I am feeling really bad about the way I am handling this quarantine or stay-at-home order or whatever you call it. Like most people I know, my partner and I are working from home, and my job actually takes much less time than when I had to commute and lunch and schmooze. We live in a nice-enough place and don’t have kids at home to worry about.

I feel like I should see this as an opportunity, but except for a couple of my closest friends, it seems that everybody else in a situation like ours is making much better use of their time than I am—even my partner is following a rigorous exercise program, learning Italian, and helping set up a letter-writing and funding campaign for local candidates. Me, I overeat—and not even home-baked goodies, just the stuff we get delivered—and sleep in, and call my friends and family until they are probably sick of me, and then lie on the couch, scrolling through social media on my phone or watching CNN and MSNBC in horrified fascination. I only do chores when absolutely necessary for domestic peace. Meanwhile, all my Facebook and Instagram buddies and Zoom colleagues sound like my partner on steroids. The meals they post! The skills they’ve acquired! The modern operas they’ve streamed! The beauties of nature they have discovered and appreciated and recorded! The good deeds they have accomplished remotely!

This situation feels like a test of who we are, and it turns out that I’m not all that great. If I were Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I would wake up the same every morning, except fatter. What do you think is wrong with me? Do you have any ideas about why I am so bad at this?

—Self-disillusioned

Dear Selfie,

Please, please go easy on yourself.

I don’t see anything wrong with you, unless you count paying too much attention to social media. You must know by now that personal social media wouldn’t last a week without posts designed to make people feel inadequate. Okay, they would still have animal antics and inflammatory politics. And of course there are some people (mostly grandparents) whose posts are just innocent bragging, and a smattering of others who honestly want to inform or amuse their friends. But most of what’s posted on social media is like holiday newsletters: bowdlerized, inflated, slanted, and cherry-picked, leaving the reader wondering why their LED-lit wreath from L. L. Bean suddenly looks so pathetic and banal. Think about it: if the people who post about those operas also watch NCIS reruns while eating Hostess Snoballs, are they going to tell you?

I note that the only other subpar quarantiners you know are among your “closest friends.” Could this be because you actually learned about their lives through close personal relationships and first-hand experience, not social media?

And even assuming that many people you know really are living fuller, more productive lives than you right now, so what? We all have to survive these times as best we can. If you come through this pandemic and this quarantine alive and sane, and haven’t intentionally or negligently hurt anybody else, I would count you a success—and it sounds as if you’re on track.

But it also sounds as if you are anxious and depressed. If so, and even if your depression or anxiety has reached clinical levels, you are far from alone: The Washington Post just reported that, for every 100 American adults, 34 show “clinically significant” symptoms of anxiety, depression or both. (I wonder how many of them are crying on the inside while they post images of laughter and Thai barbecue around the home fire-pit?) When I read the Post article, my first response was to wonder what was wrong with the other 66 Americans—and yet depression and anxiety, however “warranted” by the circumstances around us, sap our energy and strength and health and joy, and are well worth combating. It wouldn’t hurt for you to see somebody (if virtually, for now).

As I hope I have made clear, I do not think you are “bad at this,” and doubt whether the concept even makes sense. But I do think you would be considerably happier—and possibly more active and energetic and generally Facebook-worthy, but that’s icing on the cake—if you take control of your overall screen time. There are apps for this. I prefer the simpler method of setting an alarm on my phone and then jumping up and heading outside with the dog or into the shower but, if alarms don’t work for you, you can always find an app that will record your screen time, admonish you, time-limit certain activities, etc. Try not only to disregard most of your social media, but also to see less of it.

Then there are the news and commentary channels. These—the two you mention, in fact: CNN and MSNBC—happen to be bones of contention in our house. Ward loves to watch them on our living room TV, and to have them play in the background while he does the crossword and goes through the mail and so on. I am usually good for about a half-hour at a stretch, at which point I start getting angry and impatient and even feel a little sick—not because I disbelieve the what I hear, but because I do believe it and would just as soon not have to hear any of it more than once, if that. It’s important to learn what’s going on, of course, but I find that I can only cope with a certain level of repetition and vitriol.

Neither of us is right: what energizes Ward enervates me. I therefore do my best to limit my TV news time and focus on radio and, best of all, print media, preferably actually in printed form (Nice heft! No soul-sucking comment section!) You sound more like me than like Ward, so I strongly suggest that you do likewise.

In sum: do what you will. If you can, try for the middle ground, somewhere between perfection and self-destructive wallowing. Don’t obsess about eating and exercise, but do get off the couch a bit more often (I lure myself outside with silly podcasts) and try to keep that COVID 15 to 15 (mine’s hovering around 14, and that’s on top of a recent knee-injury 20). But if you blow it, what’s the big deal? What does it matter on the world-disaster scale?

As for all those phone calls you make to your friends and family, keep at it. I am sure they love hearing from you, and it is always better to err on the side of more rather than less attention to your loved ones during an isolating time like this.

—Onward and upward!

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Cover Photos by Koshu Kunii and David Veksler on Unsplash

Dear June,

For the past few months I have been working full-time on a national political campaign with a group of intelligent, committed, interesting people. One of these people—whom I’ll call Christine—lives just down the street from me. I had seen her around and chatted with her a few times when we walked our dogs, and had thought more than once that it might be nice to get to know her better, so I was pleased when I saw that we would be working together and hoped that we might become friends (and nothing else: we are both straight women).

But it looks like she wants nothing to do with me. She’s never unpleasant or rude, but she seems to go out of her way to keep me at a distance. People at headquarters are always going out to grab lunch together, and I have asked her to do so three times, twice as part of a small group and once just with me. She said no every time, saying she wanted to eat in. But she almost never eats in otherwise. I’ve also offered her a ride home several times, and she has always refused that, too, although twice I saw her getting into an Uber just as I was leaving. When I try to strike up a conversation with her about anything, even our jobs, she talks in monosyllables and extricates herself as soon as possible. With other people at the office she tends to be warm and vivacious, even outgoing.

Can you give me any idea what might be wrong with me, or what I should do to turn this situation around?  Other than the way she treats me, I really like this woman.

—Rejected in Riverdale

Dear Rej,

You haven’t said anything to make me think there’s anything wrong with you—except, maybe, for the insecurity that makes you ask what’s wrong with you.

There are several possible explanations, other than some real or perceived defect of yours, for Christine’s not accepting your overtures. It could just be a matter of a series of coincidences: she may have been swamped, or already spoken for, or in the middle of a riveting book, on the days you happened to ask her to have lunch. She may not have been going directly home on the days she ordered those Ubers. As for her apparent brusqueness with you, it may simply be that she takes a while to warm up to new people. Or that you have been catching her at busy hectic times.

Or she may in fact be putting you off, but not because of any quality of yours. Maybe she prefers to keep her work life separate from her personal life, in which case your living right down the street may actually create a barrier for her. Some people go to great lengths to leave office pressures and office gossip at the office, and the pressures and concerns of their home life at home. As for not accepting your offer of a ride, Christine may just like to unwind alone. I used to work at a stressful job with a long solitary commute—just me and music and something hot or carbonated—which I took pains to protect. In my experience, political campaigns do tend to be more intense and all-encompassing than most jobs, and the lines between work friends and all-purpose friends—or, as my non-work buddy Linda calls them, real friends—are more likely to blur. Christine may be trying to buck this trend. And, of course, she may just not want any new friends at all right now, even work friends. You say that she is friendlier to her other coworkers, but this may just be because she already knows them.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that it really is personal—that Christine just doesn’t like the cut of your jib. If something happens that forces you to believe this, try to remember that even the most worthy and delightful of us aren’t liked by everybody.

I know how much it can hurt to be rebuffed, if that is in fact what’s happening. But please don’t assume that there is anything wrong with you, and try hard not to dwell on the matter.

Besides, she may not be a prize herself. You say that you like everything about her except the way she treats you. But it doesn’t sound as if you know her that well; and even if she does turn out to have all sorts of other sterling qualities, the way she treats you is pretty much the whole show as far as you’re concerned. You don’t want to fall into the role of the pursuer, which can be terrible for the ego and take up lots of time and emotional energy.

You ask me what you should do to “turn the situation around.”  My short answer is: do nothing. Stop going out of your way to invite her to lunch, or offer a ride home, at least for the time being. Maybe she’ll start being friendlier after getting to know you better over the course of your both working together and living in the same neighborhood. Or maybe not, but your quite-reasonable friendly overtures haven’t worked so far, and persisting in them might have the effect of making her think you are needy, or bossy, or the sort of person who can’t take a hint.

I hope some blizzard or campaign trip throws you together and gives her a chance to know and like you, or that she warms to you over time. If not, her loss.

Carry on, and get out the vote!

LA WALLY SAYS:

I’ve had that happen. You could ask her what the deal is, but that might be awkward. Or you could just accept that she doesn’t seem to want to be friends. Not everyone will like you.

Dear June,

Last Christmas my least-favorite aunt gave my parents matching DNA/ancestry tests, and they duly sent in their swabs. Although neither of my parents found any new close relatives or anything, my mother got some surprising results. Her case was sort of like the one they used to show on TV, where some guy always thought he was German and found out he was “really” Scottish, except that for my mom it was Italian vs. Spanish (or maybe Portuguese): she had an Italian surname and, when she thought about the matter at all, believed that most or all of her family was of Italian extraction, but according to the DNA test she was 80% “Iberian Peninsula.”

The TV guy went right out and changed his lederhosen for a kilt. Unlike him, my mom did not see any reason to alter anything about her life. She had been raised in a tradition that was “basically unhyphenated,” as she puts it, and Italian-American only in the sense that they ate a lot of Italian food and went to the occasional opera. Mom is a fourth- and fifth-generation American, as far as she call tell, and figures that it would be silly to suddenly start revising her sense of ethnic identity now, since nobody in her family’s living memory spoke Spanish or Portuguese, or otherwise showed ties to Spanish or Portuguese culture. She plans to continue cooking and eating Italian food and listening to opera because, as she says, she always has—and because she liked them, and neither activity requires a license.

My dad, who is of mixed Northern European WASP origin and whose test told him nothing new, can’t understand my mom’s lack of interest in her test and what he calls its “startling” and “exciting” results. He keeps urging her to get a fuller genealogy done and find out more about these long-dead ancestors so that he can take her out to flamenco or fado—or, if some of these supposed forbears took a detour on the way to the USA, possibly mariachi—concerts, as appropriate, and maybe pay a visit to her place(s) of origin after a few language classes. She says no to any more research. As for concerts and trips, she says that she is up for most concerts and trips, but not because of any alleged blood ties she never even knew about until last Christmas.

Much to my amazement, this ancestry thing is causing real tension in my family. He tells her that she shouldn’t deny who she is. She tells him that she’s not denying anything, she just thinks her distant ancestry has very little to do with who she is. He says she should embrace her heritage. She asks him why he hell he won’t just let it go, and why he is acting as if she is a different person now, and as if he’d found out she and her family had been deceiving themselves or something. The other day when I was in their driveway loading up my car to go home I could hear them ratcheting up their disagreement, complete with name-calling: Coward! Creep! Totally lacking in curiosity! Un-American!

Do you agree with me that my dad is about 90% in the wrong here?  Can you think of anything to do to calm things down?  Why do people even take these tests???

—Had It in Haddonfield

P.S. In case this matters, I don’t think anybody in my family favors any of these cultures over the others. My dad loves Verdi and worships cannoli, and both my parents encouraged me to minor in Spanish in college and spend my junior year in Madrid.

Dear Had It,

I agree with you about your dad. In fact, I would up the percentage to, say, 96, and he only gets that 4% because your mother—it is your mother, right?– called him a creep, which is hardly ever a good idea.

From what I’ve seen, people—I am speaking here of individuals with a purely personal interest, not academics or scientists or amateur historians—get involved with genealogy and genetic testing for all sorts of reasons. Some of these reasons are clearly unexceptionable or even compelling, like health-related concerns, or the desire to learn more about the lives of recent ancestors and maybe find some precious photos or a long-lost cousin. Some reasons can be downright inspiring, as in the case of quests to uncover the past of enslaved forbears or victims of genocide. At the other extreme you have the snobs and bigots hoping to establish their superiority to the rest of us by proving that they come from what a repellant ex-acquaintance of mine called “good stock,” thanks to a family tree they can trace back to people nobody in ten generations would recognize if they walked up and played the fife at them.

But I suspect that most searches are somewhere in the middle, and are motivated by idle curiosity, with the hope of discovering something flattering or at least mildly interesting about one’s forbears. It sounds to me as if your unfavorite aunt sent the tests, and your parents took them, for reasons of that sort. (Actually, in your mother’s case, the chief reason may have been more on the order of: “Better just take the stupid test, but I would have preferred a scarf.”)  All in the spirit of harmless fun.

What a shame that your father is leaching away whatever scant amusement the test may have afforded your mother by making a big deal out of a report—which, by the way, could be inaccurate or misleading for any number of reasons you can read about in stupefying detail online—purporting to show that her remote European ancestors lived a few hundred miles west of where she used to think they had, if she thought about it at all.

If, upon reading her test results, your mom had squealed with delight, said “You know, I’ve always felt drawn to Spanish [and/or Portuguese] culture,” and run off to sign up for language lessons and amass travel brochures, that would have been just fine—as long as she didn’t go overboard and start thinking of herself as an instant minority or calling you “mija.”  But she didn’t, which is also fine, and it baffles me that your father thinks he has anything to say now that she has made her wishes known. She does not see herself as having any meaningful “Iberian” heritage to reclaim. This is totally her call.

I did entertain (for about three seconds) the idea that, given the appalling way our government and some of our citizens are treating immigrants from the south and Latinx people in general, your mom should proclaim her new DNA status as an act of solidarity and stand with them. But this idea totally misses the point. All of us, including your mom, should stand with them—but I don’t see why your mom has any special right, or duty, to ally herself with Spanish, Portuguese, and/or Latinx people as if everybody with “Iberian” DNA is part of some kind of monolith, no matter where and how they have lived down the generations, what languages they speak, and what culture they see as their own.

Cultural heritage is a living, experiential thing, not something you get from a bunch of molecules. I’m reminded of a story I kept hearing years ago, when we were adopting a child and trading horror stories, about how a passerby walked up to the American adoptive mother of a Korean infant and asked how the family was going to handle the language barrier. Of course, that adoptive mom (if she really existed) probably went out of her way to expose her child to Korean culture and perhaps the Korean language, which makes perfect sense. Learning where they came from can foster a sense of pride and a feeling of connection for kids who have been adopted away from their country of birth—especially when their being ethnically different is obvious and will draw comments from curious kids and clueless adults. But your mom’s ties to Spanish or Portuguese culture appear so tenuous that laying any special claim to that identity almost seems phony, like posing. (I do not use the freighted term “cultural appropriation” because this letter is plenty long already and, given your mom’s attitude, why go there?)

So yeah, your dad has absolutely no right to pressure your mom or to question her attitudes about her own identity. But my saying that—and its’ being true – will not help you much with your question about how to “calm things down.”  It’s hard for me to imagine his maintaining his current level of concern for much longer; but, then again, it’s hard for me to imagine his having gotten so worked up in the first place.

You might try sitting your folks, or just your dad, down and explaining how you hate to see them disagreeing and arguing. Say that you see those test results as the mother of all non-issues, and really hope that your dad can move on. Add that you are grateful for your parents’ having exposed you many rich cultures, and especially for helping you spend a year in Spain.

One last note: from the tone of your letter, I assumed that you are as uninterested in your supposed Iberian-peninsula DNA as your mother. But was I wrong? Unlike your mom, you were already a serious student of Spanish language and culture, and had chosen to spend a year in Spain, before she got tested. I can see how you might like the idea of ancestors from Spain and/or Portugal, and might even want to explore your mother’s family tree a little further. And as long as your research is basically recreational, or part of a history project or something, and not a quest for a new sense of identity, why not?  Just don’t tell your parents, at least not quite yet.

LA WALLY SAYS:

I agree that your dad is being ridiculous. You should tell him to lay off. If it doesn’t mean anything to your mom, it shouldn’t to him. I do think they should take an extra (not substitute!) vacation to Spain and Portugal, though. Because why not?

Dear June,

Assuming good health, is it ever too late to write a novel? I am asking not for a friend but for myself, a woman in her late sixties.

—Geriatric in Germantown

Dear Gerry,

Absolutely not. If you think you have the stamina—and why wouldn’t you, in your sixties?—go for it. I know from experience as an editor that first novels by older people aren’t any worse, or better, stylistically than first novels by young people. And you probably have more to write about than all those whippersnappers whose experience is limited to summer jobs, M.F.A. programs, sex, and what’s left of academia.

I should warn you, though, that publishing your novel may pose special challenges, at least if you are hoping to work with a traditional house. I have only anecdotal evidence for this but, from what several of my friends tell me, it is harder to get an agent, much less land a publisher, as you get older. One novelist-professor I know is convinced that her first name, which was the third most popular baby-girl name in 1955, keeps all those twenty-something first readers at magazines and publishing houses from giving her work serious consideration.

She is considering a nom de plume—or, rather, a nom that nobody out there knows is de plume, but believes to be the name she was born with—one that’s younger-sounding and, while she’s at it, androgynous. I think she may be onto something here. If you’re just starting out as a writer, or just getting back to writing after a long time away, I’d definitely consider changing a name that might peg you as older. I’d go with a choice from the popular baby names lists of the late 90s or, maybe better, a name that’s young-sounding but also just plain weird. You could even change your email and, if you’ve got a friend or child who’ll help, your physical address while you’re at it: Fox Ambrose ([email protected], #2B, 100 Polk Street, Somewhere in Brooklyn) will probably get taken more seriously than Linda White ([email protected], Villa #5 Bayview Independent Living, Tampa Exurbs).

I am only half-joking about this gambit. But I know that, like most people, you probably have plenty of good reasons not to try it—like fear of discovery, preferring not to behave like a character in a silly movie, and liking your actual name and contact information. And you may have a well-developed sense of pride and personal integrity.

In any case, as I am sure you’ve heard, even the young and charismatic have a hard time securing good agents or traditional publishers. I hope and trust that, much as every writer would love to find a power agent and get picked up by a traditional house, fame and fortune (or, to add a hint of realism, midlist status and a small advance) are not what motivate you. Your letter doesn’t tell me much—for all I know, you are shivering in a garret somewhere, desperately hoping to write yourself out of desperate straits—but I like to think that you have enough money for essentials, and that you can make time for writing.

If you do have the time and money, write for the joy of it —the joy of the process, and the joy of accomplishment. Getting lost writing long fiction can be one of life’s great pleasures, sort of like an ongoing lucid dream. And this is true even if your novel is not a commercial success—indeed, even if it never gets published at all, or doesn’t turn out to be especially good, or never actually gets finished.

Do finish your book, though, and make some revisions, and maybe find or hire one or more people to look it over, and make some more revisions—and then get it out there, with or without a traditional publisher. These days it is quite honorable, and fairly affordable, to self-publish. I know people who, thanks mostly to the Internet, have done very well publicizing their book, getting online reviews, finding readers, and sometimes even earning real money.

Try not to waste time on self-doubt or regret. As George Eliot said: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  Well, actually it is, if you are talking about childbearing or climbing Everest or playing the Queen of the Night. But I think she’s got it right where fiction writing is concerned. And she should know: she published the great Middlemarch in her fifties, which is like being about 85 in 21^st– Century years. So pick up that quill and get started.

LA WALLY SAYS:

No, it is never too late to do anything, except maybe have a baby. Always try any new thing that makes you happy!

Dear June,

My longtime (almost seven years now) partner and I are both women in our late 20s. Both of us are overweight, but Trudy, as I will call my partner, is heavier than I am. She is much more comfortable with her weight, perhaps because she has been big for most of her life, while I have only really struggled with my weight since I gave up competitive sports after college.

When I went for a physical this past July, my doctor suggested that I lose about thirty pounds. She said it might help me cope with the aftereffects of a knee injury. She also pointed out that my weight had been creeping up steadily for years and that this was something I should try to turn around sooner rather than later.

So I joined a support group and started tracking the food I ate. Also counting calories and measuring portions, which is kind of a drag, and working out three or four times a week, which to my surprise feels really good. So far I have been losing almost a pound a week and have gone down a size and a half. I get horrible food cravings sometimes, but most of the time I am happy with my plan and thrilled with my progress. I have more energy and my knee feels a little better.

But my relationship with Trudy is suffering. I never realized how much of what we do revolves around either eating or drinking or sitting around. Eating out and going to bars is basically how we socialize with most of our friends. At home, we cook for each other—I make great soups and casseroles, and Trudy is a wonderful baker. Then we veg out in front of the TV, usually with beer or wine and all sorts of munchies.

I can still do most of these things, but I am trying to cook much lighter meals (which I often make in two versions to accommodate her and which she is of course is free to augment in any way she pleases). And I really can’t eat more than a token bite of Trudy’s baked goods. When we go out, I drink seltzer and eat mostly salads. Lately I have been suggesting more movies and concerts and fewer big dinners out, because they are a bit of a trial for me. But Trudy acts as if my not eating fattening food along with her, and my not wanting our social life to center on food and drink quite as much as it used to, is insensitive or even hostile.  She also resents it when I go to the gym.  

Lately she has been going out of her way to bake my favorite breads and cakes and buy my favorite wines. One night about a week ago, when presented with a rich chocolate torte, I asked her not to do this so much and she started to cry, as if I had been ungracious about a gift, which I guess maybe I had. Then the other night when we were eating out with friends and I ordered just an appetizer she kept trying to get me to “do the restaurant justice” and not be such a stickler.  

Last night we kind of had it out. She told me that she didn’t recognize me, that I was becoming an uptight person and denying myself—and therefore her—life’s small pleasures out of a desire to conform to some societal idea of female beauty. That most people who try to take weight off gain it all back again in a few years, so why bother?  That she loves me just the way I am, and she hopes I feel the same way about her, but now she is starting to wonder. She said that I used to understand that fat was beautiful until I started counting calories and trying to be something I’m not.

What am I supposed to do?  I really love Trudy, but I also want to get healthier and, I admit, maybe look and move a little better. Do you think she’s right that I am sabotaging our relationship?

—Losing It in Lafayette

Dear Losing It,

No, but I do think she is sabotaging your diet—or, as we should probably call it if you want to maintain it, your “lifestyle change.”

What surprises me about Trudy’s conduct is how up-front she is. Most people who try to sabotage a dieter are a lot more subtle about it, and may not even know what they are doing until they get called out. But Trudy is quite clear that she does not want you to succeed with your current plan of eating less and moving more, and that she does not want your body to change, either.

Trudy’s behavior is terrible. She is tearing you down, disrespecting your choice, trying to make you feel guilty, predicting that you will fail, and trying her best to see that you do. If your new eating and exercise regimen were really self-destructive or unhealthy or doomed to failure, there might be some justification for her strategy, if not her tactics. But it is not as if you are starving yourself —I say this based on your steady but not startling weight loss—or hurting yourself in any way. You are acting on doctor’s orders, and your diet and exercise program sound reasonable—better for your body, in fact, than your previous lifestyle with Trudy. Nor do you seem to be trying to turn into a Barbie doll: you started out thinking primarily about your knee and your future health and well-being. If you end up looking “better” in terms of social norms, that is just fine, as long as you continue to accept and appreciate people who don’t look that way.

Trudy is right about one thing: most dieters regain the weight they’ve lost. Weight gain is a complex issue and often an intractable problem. And that’s a good reason to be vigilant, seek support or expert help if you need it, keep exercising (there is some evidence that exercise can help maintain weight loss, and anyway it is good for you), and go easy on yourself if you backslide. But it’s a very bad reason to give up in the middle of a successful diet and exercise plan, especially a slow, steady, reasonable one like yours that actually has a good shot at becoming a way of life.

I can see how it would be hard for Trudy to cope with the loss of your comfortable daily routines; but it sounds as if you are willing to compromise, and she should be willing to do the same.

Whether she is emotionally capable of his kind of compromise is another matter. Trudy sounds cripplingly insecure and terrified of rejection. Based on your history together, you might be able to reassure her that you will still love her body, no matter how your own body changes: after all, it sounds as if you were considerably thinner when you started dating her, and her size was not an issue then. She may also be worried that you will leave her for somebody thinner if you become more conventionally attractive to other women and they pursue you—an attitude which, when you stop and think about it, is fairly insulting to both of you: Does she think you are only staying with a fat woman because you are a fat woman, too, and can do no “better”?  You two need to discuss this.

The facet of her insecurity that worries me the most is her apparent belief that your losing weight, and living in a way that makes this possible, is in itself a rejection of her body and her lifestyle. If she can’t accept that you need to live and look in ways you quite reasonably think are best for you, I do not hold out much hope for your relationship. You two really need to discuss this.

I strongly suggest couples counseling. I am sure it would help Trudy to give her side of the story. She may want a neutral party to listen when she says that it’s hard to drink alone; hard to enjoy ribs and blackout cake when her ever-more-svelte partner orders baby arugula, dressing on the side, and six raspberries; hard to watch as the woman she loves puts on strange Spandex clothes and heads off to the gym on mornings that used to be for books and Danish and cuddling in sweatpants. And it is hard. But it’s necessary, and a healthy relationship can survive it.

Good luck. And may I suggest angel food cake, Vita Tops, and spaghetti squash with marinara sauce and shaved Parmesan? All under 150 calories.

LA WALLY SAYS:

No, Trudy is wrong. People grow and change. If this makes you happier and healthier you should do it. Everyone is beautiful, but Trudy needs to understand that you have to be the person you want to be. Don’t let her get in the way of your happiness.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

La Wally is the nom de June of June Cleaver‘s adult daughter. In real life, she’s an artist and entrepreneur. What’s up with her name? In choosing a pseudonym, the two of them considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons. “Wally” alone seemed too masculine and generally hideous. But “La Wally” brings to mind Catalani’s wonderful opera. Speaking of which, have you seen the movie Diva? You should.

Image credit: Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Dear June,

 When I was in my late twenties, I quit my job as a C.P.A. to write fiction. The plan was to spend a year or so banging out a brilliant literary novel, and then see what happened. In the four years that followed I learned that writing a brilliant literary novel was harder than I had anticipated. I also got married to my longtime companion and had a kid. I never did go back to my Big Four firm; nowadays I spend most mornings either working on the damn novel or doing a smattering of freelance accounting work from my home office, and most afternoons and evenings with my daughter. Although I am still hoping to be a successful writer some day, I am basically satisfied with my life, and so is my husband. But I have a problem with many of my friends and family, who keep telling me that I am not following my feminist ideals and not living up to my promise.

They also ask me when I am going to start working again. Sometimes I detect a hint of accusation in their question, as if I am some sort of parasite. Other times what I detect sounds more like pity, as if I am some poor sequestered hausfrau. But even when the question is probably totally neutral, it makes me crazy. What do they think I am doing?

—Livid in Larchmont

Dear Livid,

Let’s take your friends’ and family’s obnoxious attitudes in order:

Not following your feminist ideals. Where I come from, which is a land of many marches and much reading and even some legal activism, one of feminism’s basic tenets is that sexism and gender-based discrimination should not restrict anybody’s freedom. With the possible exception of one or two long-discredited articles from the 1980s, there’s nothing I know of in feminist theory about having to spend your life in a Big Four firm (although I think it was Big Six, or even Eight, back then), even if you’d very much rather not, just because fancy accounting firms used to be mostly white-male-only. It sounds to me as if you are living the way you want to live, and that—unless your free-lance employers are villains of some sort—none of your three occupations runs counter to any feminist ideal I can conjure up. I award you the June Seal of Approval, and hope it helps.

Not living up to your promise. Oh, for God’s sake. Unless your promise was to make pots of money, it sounds to me as if you are doing just fine. You have a child, a spouse who seems to agree with you about what matters (I’m extrapolating), and enough economic security in your family to spend time with your daughter and do creative work. You are keeping your hand in as an accountant while caring for a young child, which seems like a perfectly fine work-family balance to me.

And you are working on a novel, which is a brave and generous act. If you complete your novel and it is a critical or popular success, I doubt whether many of those annoying friends and family members you describe will say you have not lived up to your promise. But even if what you produce is a good but unpopular, or unpublishable, novel, that’s still wonderful. In fact, even if all you produce is simply an honest effort, maybe not so good, maybe impossible to complete, you should still be proud. You had the courage and imagination to try

Besides, it sounds as if you’re not even thirty-five yet. Anything you are doing now could be preparing you for great accomplishments, in literature or finance or something altogether different. Not that it has to. Living a good life is more than enough.

Asking when you will be going back to work. As you and I both know, you are working three jobs right now. There’s your part-time accounting work. And then you have your child care and your writing, each of which can be full-time, even overtime, jobs in themselves, as when your daughter gets sick or you have a writing workshop deadline or your kid keeps you up until five with night terrors and then you wake up at five-thirty trembling with embarrassment over a story you just sent out, and can’t get back to sleep until you reread it.

I suppose some of your friends and family may not know, or remember, how much time it takes to raise a child and care for a home. And they may never understand the extent to which you value and enjoy the contributions you can make to your family life by spending more time at home.

Even the people who do get it about parenting may have no idea how hard it is, and how much time it takes most people, to write fiction, or understand that you take your writing very seriously and see it as more than a sideline. (Since you are a C.P.A., I assume that at least some of your friends are, too. Remember that these people live and breathe our tax structure, which treats jobs as hobbies if they fail to produce significant income.)

Other people in your circle probably do have a basic understanding that your various pursuits—as an aspiring novelist, a part-time accountant working from home, and a stay-at-home mom—all require effort and are “work” in that sense; but those same people may nevertheless believe that working full-time outside the home and being on some accounting-firm’s fast track is the “real work.” These folks probably place a higher value than you do on conventional success and status, salary, economic security, and so on—so they tend to assume that a new parent with a professional degree should return to using it full-time as soon as possible in order to maximize their earning potential and keep their competitive edge. You have other values, and that’s more than fine.

I hate to say this, but some of your friends and family may resent that you are doing what you enjoy; or they may have some visceral sense that, if you are doing what you want, and enjoying it, and not making very much money at it, what you do can’t really count as “work,” which requires either a regular salary, or at least a certain amount of unhappiness and aversion. (Kant and a lot of the more dismal old Protestants extend that idea to all of ethics: being good doesn’t really count if it’s what you’d do anyway, duty or no duty. So you are fighting a strong current.)

Having just explained how wrongheaded and small-minded some of your friends and family may be, I still want to remind you that many people who ask when you plan to return to work often mean no harm and intend no judgment: they simply define “work” as paid activity. This is especially true in the case of stay-at-home parenting. Many people, including feminist stay-at-home moms who deeply value the path they’ve taken, talk about “going back to work” after full-time parenting. I wish they wouldn’t, but I believe that the word usage in their case is almost always purely semantic, and implies no judgment about the value of parenting or unpaid work generally, or the effort involved in doing it.

But even these benign souls could use a little educating. Connotations matter. So when people ask you when you are going to start working again, I suggest answering them—mildly if they seem innocent, and more trenchantly if you suspect some snark—by saying that, for the foreseeable future, you plan to keep working at home on all your jobs: the writing, the accounting, AND the mothering. Tell them that it is a challenging life, but that you find it more fulfilling than spending hours commuting into town and then working full-time at the least favorite of your three current careers.

I also like the way you respond in your letter. When they deserve it and you think you can get away with it, why not just say: “Working? What do you think I’m doing now?”

Annoying friends and family aside, your life strikes me as quite satisfactory. But I do wonder whether you need to be on guard against letting these people get inside your head. I also worry that in some cases you may be projecting doubts and insecurities of your own onto other people, perhaps reading too much into innocent questions and imagining some of that supposed pity and disapproval.

So ask yourself: Are you internalizing what people say and imply, or even reading too much into their questions because of doubts of your own? Your reference to the “damn novel” worries me a little—are you losing interest in the book, or confidence in your ability to finish it? As for your working from home instead of going out to a more traditional, better-paying accounting job, might you feel defensive sometimes even when nobody is implying anything negative about your work situation?

As long as you are doing what you want, and what seems best for you and your family, you certainly do not have to answer to anybody outside it. But you should be vigilant about not sabotaging yourself, doubting your abilities, or slipping into patterns or activities that you yourself don’t find worthwhile or congenial. Give these issues a ponder or two and if you find cause for concern, try talking about it to trusted friends, fellow writers, fellow feminists and moms, maybe a counselor.

Best of luck with the kid, the novel, the accounts, and those vexing friends and family members.

LA WALLY SAYS:

How many of these people are actual moms? If she is happy and her husband and kids are happy, just tell people that. Ask them what they mean by “work.” Try to act interested and not pissed off. Maybe they will learn something.

Dear June,

My next-door neighbor never pays attention to anything, and it really shows in the way he keeps up his house. He does the usual minimum things, like mowing the lawn and shoveling the snow and raking the leaves, and when things get really desperate with his trees or gutters or house paint he will have somebody come and deal with it. But his place just looks shabby and untidy. 

About two weeks ago I did a little experiment, and tossed three pieces of litter next to his mailbox, including a beer bottle. So far he has done absolutely nothing to pick them up and get rid of them, even though I have actually seen him collect his mail. It’s true that he usually gets his mail just by pulling his car up to the mailbox before he drives into the garage, but if he made any effort at all to inspect the area he could certainly see the litter.

What should I do? Should I ring his doorbell and point out that the trash has been sitting there for two weeks or more? Should I tell him about my little experiment, in hopes that this will make a stronger impression on him? I don’t like living next to the least attractive house in our neighborhood.

—Tidy in Tidewater

Dear Tidytide,

I wish I could tell you that your letter arrived in the same batch as one from a man who was perplexed when he saw his next-door neighbor skitter up to his mailbox and drop three pieces of trash there for no apparent reason. But alas.

I think what you should do is go clean up the litter yourself. Just stroll by your neighbor’s mailbox, notice the trash, and pick it up. And I guess it would be fine if he observed you doing so; it might even make him more likely to clean up after himself in the future, what with seeing somebody else picking up his trash, and all. But wait, it’s not his trash, is it?

From what you write it seems as if your neighbor’s untidiness or shabbiness does not rise to the level where you or your homeowners’ association or anybody else has the right to make an issue of it. I suspect that this is why you acted surreptitiously, which is a really unappealing way to act.

If I were you, I would try to stop thinking about your neighbor and direct your attention almost anywhere else. Volunteer. Sing. Go out with your friends. If you just can’t take your mind off residential exteriors, work on your own house and yard instead of obsessing about his. (Many adages and biblical quotations are springing to mind now, but I will spare us both.) Maybe your goal should be to make your own house the most attractive in the neighborhood, with the collateral effect of distracting passersby from the unattractiveness lying in wait just next door.

I advise against talking to your neighbor, partly because I am not sure what you would say, other than “Can’t you do better?” And I certainly would not tell him about your experiment. Your neighbor might find this mean-spirited and a little crazy.

LA WALLY SAYS:

If it is that big a deal to her, I guess she could write him a note and pretend it is to all the neighbors, or maybe actually send it to all the neighbors, about keeping the neighborhood pretty. Otherwise leave him alone.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

La Wally is the nom de June of June Cleaver‘s adult daughter. In real life, she’s an artist and entrepreneur. What’s up with her name? In choosing a pseudonym, the two of them considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons. “Wally” alone seemed too masculine and generally hideous. But “La Wally” brings to mind Catalani’s wonderful opera. Speaking of which, have you seen the movie Diva? You should.

Illustration credit: Максим Власенко on Unsplash

Dear June,

I am a 52-year-old woman, long-divorced, no kids, with a steady if not huge income from freelance writing, which I do from my modest, but paid-off and very pretty, home.            

Not so bad, right? But my sister says that I should marry “Zach,” the man I have been seeing for the last two years. She keeps telling me how lucky I am to have found love at my age. She sends me studies about how being married increases longevity, sharpens the mind, etc. She also keeps reminding me that marrying him would mean instant economic security instead of probably having to scrimp and save if I retire or stop getting work. (He is quite well off.) I am very fond of Zach, and the sex is pleasant enough, but I am in no way in love with him. I feel perfectly happy to see him two or three times a week and spend the rest of the time with my good friends or my wonderful dog.              

As for Zach, he has mentioned marriage several times—I believe you could say he has proposed, though not in any dramatic way—but has in no way given me an ultimatum. I think he would be fine if we just kept going on as we have been. 

I have some questions for you. Would it be settling if I married him? If so, is it okay to settle, or should I hold out for some sort of great romance—which seems pretty silly to me at my age? And is there anything wrong with preferring your dog’s company to other people’s most of the time? 

—Maybe not OK in Norman, OK

Dear Norma May,

Your first two questions—would it be “settling” if you married Zach and, if so, would that be okay?—don’t strike me as quite the right way to look at the situation. What matters is whether you believe that you and Zach would be happier married or unmarried, not the way you or anybody else might characterize your decision.

Nor is it a question of what’s “okay,” but of what you want and need. If Zach starts putting pressure on you to make up your mind, you will simply have to weigh the benefits and possible costs. On the one hand, if you married him you’d have a considerably higher family income and the freedom that can bring. You’d also have steady companionship and, perhaps, practical help as you grow older—as against the risk of losing his companionship entirely if his proposal does become an ultimatum, or if the current arrangement makes it easier to drift apart or find other people.

On the other hand, you would be giving up the joys of personal independence, and risking the possibility that Zach may be fine as a part-time companion but not so great to share a life and home with every day, not to mention extended family and finances. (Since we are talking hard-nosed calculations here, I will add that his health and age are also relevant: you might end up being a caregiver to him.)

And assuming, as you imply, that you take marriage vows seriously, you will, of course, have to stop clinging to the possibility that you still might meet The One and have a grand romance—which, by the way, may be a long shot, but is certainly not a “silly” idea.

Happily, though, it sounds as if you are under no immediate pressure to change the status quo. Zach is acquiescent, at least for the time being, and you are “perfectly happy.” The only person who seems to be experiencing any sense of urgency about the situation is your sister, whose business it is very much not. Suggest, strongly, that she keep her own counsel.

As for preferring the company of your dog most of the time: why not? What better friend can you have when you are writing than a silent, loving, furry, amusing, nonjudgmental presence? What more satisfying companion when you are walking outside, or pacing inside, thinking about what to write or pitch next? Or when you are procrastinating, or dreaming of glory, or licking your wounds when glory has eluded you yet again? Or when your current writing assignment is pure drudgery, and you need to take a break on your own schedule and terms? Not that you have to be a writer to benefit greatly from having a dog around. When work is done, dogs force you to get up and go outdoors. When you take them out with you, they protect or at least reassure you and keep you company as you walk or run or along, while still leaving room for rumination and audiobooks. Once you settle in for the evening—unless you are the sort of monster who bans dogs from your couch and bed—they can be counted on to warm your legs and feet pretty much indefinitely. And if you do end up feeling the need for more human companionship, most dogs can help out there, too. (I remember one particular week in our local dog park when a young minister and his Weimaraner helped me and my dog face some existential questions. The Rev and I still chat sometimes while our dogs sniff and chase things.)

As long as you do see those “good friends” with some regularity and get together with Zach two or three times a week, I see nothing wrong or even odd about your preferring canine companionship in many or even most of your quiet moments. Fond as I am of human beings, I often prefer to spend time with my golden retriever. This is especially true when my dog’s presence creates a sort of enhanced solitude as I do the things I would otherwise tend, or at least prefer, to do alone, like reading, cooking, dozing in front of biopics, or dancing around the room in sweatpants while lip-synching to Aretha in The Blues Brothers. Of course, there are plenty of areas, mostly involving language, where humans do a much better job than dogs. Puns, needless to say. Certain kinds of irony. Thoughtful observations about films or Paul Manafort or Alan Dershowitz. Insights into Analytic Philosophy. Shopping tips. On the other hand, with dogs there’s no risk of spoilers, gossip, infuriating observations about Paul Manafort or Alan Dershowitz, betrayals of confidence, pretentious misinterpretations of Bertrand Russell, or unsolicited sisterly marriage advice.

The worst problem with dogs, in my experience, is their too-short lifespan. For this reason, and although there are plenty of good arguments against messing with a successful one-dog household, I would at least think about getting a back-up pup, or perhaps a cat, so you will never find yourself petless. Just a thought.

To sum up: everything you are doing seems perfectly okay, except maybe paying attention to your sister.

LA WALLY SAYS:

She should talk more to Zach. Maybe he is just proposing, or whatever he is doing, because he thinks it’s what she wants. If she does not love him at this point, she might not be happy later. But for now she just has to keep talking to him if she wants to know his feelings and her own feelings better. 

As for preferring the dog’s company most of the time, duh. Of course that’s okay.

Dear June,

Every year my widowed mother treats me, my wife, and now our daughter, who just turned three, to a week at a fancy beach resort. (Well, not to the endless overpriced meals she insists on, but that’s another matter.) It is Mom’s favorite place in the world: she used to go there every year for a week with my dad. The resort is expensive, and she can ill afford it, but she insists on doing this “for us.” In some ways we would just as soon spend our vacation time relaxing alone, somewhere simpler and cheaper. But the week at this resort has become a tradition. And the beach really is gorgeous. I am sure that the trip is the high point of my mom’s year.

We always go in August or late July. When we started making plans this year, I told my mother that we could come any week except the third week in August because Jeannette, my wife, had some medical appointments then.  

This was the week my mother booked. When I reminded her about Jeannette’s conflict, at first she said that she had forgotten. Then, when I suggested that one of us simply call and change the date, she told me that actually she had not forgotten but that this was the only time she could reserve the unit she liked best—which, as I later learned, was also the only one with both a bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor, something she genuinely needs.

I told my mother that Jeannette could not miss her appointments, but I did not tell her why. (They are fertility-related, and Jeannette and I do not want to talk about this to anybody right now.) My mother said that the reservations were not refundable, and started to cry.

What ended up happening is that I drove Mom up by myself, and Jeannette and our daughter joined us midweek. This involved a three-hour train ride and a four-hour bus ride—not a great solution, but Jeannette and I agreed that it made more sense than her renting a second car and making the long drive by herself with a very active little girl.

Jeannette and Ellie arrived late in the afternoon and wanted to go right to the beach for a swim—whereupon my mother made a huge scene, saying (among other things) that Jeannette had already insisted on cutting the family vacation in half, and now she wanted to make everybody late for dinner at Chez Michel?

Jeannette said something to the effect of “I’m not going to get sucked into this tonight,” suited up herself and Ellie, and took off, telling me and Mom that there was no need to wait dinner, since she and Ellie had noshed on the bus and, anyway, the last thing they wanted to do was sit still in some public place for another two hours. 

Over dinner my mom told me that she was very disappointed in Jeannette, and that this was really the last straw. I told her not to be so self-centered, and it degenerated from there.

For the rest of the week—four very long days—nobody mentioned any of this: not Jeannette’s coming late, not my mom’s booking that week when we asked her not to, not the long train and bus ride, not Jeannette’s going right to the beach, not my fight with Mom over dinner, none of it. Mom and Jeannette were both horribly polite and bland and gracious. The weather was perfect, thank God, so we all got to hang out on the beach and sit around the pool, and eat outside and play croquet and so on. And talk about all the cute things Ellie was doing. So nobody really needed to bare their souls or anything.

Mom lives about halfway between the resort and the town where we live now. After we dropped Mom off, Jeannette told me she was never going back to the resort again. Since then neither she nor Mom has said a word to the other about last summer, or next summer. What should I do? 

—Fretful in Fresno

Dear Fretful,

I would just let things simmer down for a while.

Although you write as if the burning issue is your wife’s announcement that she’ll never return there, I assume that your primary goal is not to go to that particular resort, but for Jeannette and your mother to get along better and nobody to be unhappy. It sounds as if your wife and mother have at least observed the forms during and since your benighted vacation, so I am guessing that they will continue to do so and that if you make an effort you can avoid a glaring decline in visits, holiday observances, calls, etc.

With any luck, Jeannette will start feeling less raw and angry over time. Maybe she has already? You can help by supporting her whenever the subject of the vacation, or your mother’s conduct generally, comes up. Raise the subject if she still hasn’t. Thank Jeannette for her patience; tell her how much you appreciate her. Lay it on as thick as you can without straining her credulity. After all, she may not have been the soul of forbearance while at the resort, but from the way you tell it she was basically in the right: your mother disregarded Jeannette’s totally reasonable request, and then lied about it—to say nothing of expecting her to start toeing the vacation line the minute she and her tired three-year-old arrived at the resort. To me this indicates a stunning self-absorption, some disrespect, and perhaps a soupçon of antipathy. (Would your mom have scheduled that week if you had been the one with the conflict?)

Not that it really matters who was in the right; the important thing is to get past this unpleasantness and prevent future problems.

You are right, of course, that one problem is what happens with next year’s family vacation, if any. How long do you have before it is time to book the resort for next year (bearing in mind that they seem to run out of those rooms with the downstairs bathrooms pretty early)? If the deadline is still some months away, and if you think that the prospect of a week at the usual place is still worth salvaging—for your mother’s sake, or to preserve family peace, or just because a week there still seems better than other options—you may be able to soothe, cajole, and bribe Jeannette in the interim, while also taking various measures to rein in Mom, like gently and repeatedly explaining that your family schedules and duties are complicated, and that you have to insist on clearing all dates in advance. Make sure she knows that, although you love her unconditionally, you support your wife totally. And do support her: your letter seemed to waver a bit.

Many things can happen over the course of a few months. Jeannette could spontaneously relent. Mom could apologize. Jeannette could then apologize, even, saying she had been stressed. Or something could intervene. An illness. A new passion for cruises. A pregnancy! The discovery of a resort with fewer stairs and more powder rooms, a resort free of memories and rituals, perhaps in a more convenient location for everybody.

Good luck with everything, from recreation to procreation.

P.S. Just asking: are you certain that your mother is not slipping a bit when it comes to managing her affairs? Could she have in fact forgotten about that week’s being unavailable, and then gotten flustered and lied to cover up her memory loss? This explanation, though of course more hopeful as regards any general pigheadedness or antipathy for your wife, creates obvious problems of its own. And you may know enough to dismiss it out of hand; but, if you have any reason to suspect that Mom may be losing her grip, give some thought to taking over the scheduling and booking yourself, if your mother will let you—and if your wife relents about spending a week at this resort, or any resort, with her mother-in-law.

LA WALLY SAYS:

Basically, I got nuthin.’ I see the frustrations on both sides. The mom sounds unreasonable, but she’s the mom so maybe the husband should ask his wife to just put up with it for one week a year while his mother is still around and can handle the trip. My big question: is that the only vacation time the couple has?

Image credit: Jarrod Reed on Unsplash

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

La Wally is the nom de June of June Cleaver‘s adult daughter. In real life, she’s an artist and entrepreneur. What’s up with her name? In choosing a pseudonym, the two of them considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons. “Wally” alone seemed too masculine and generally hideous. But “La Wally” brings to mind Catalani’s wonderful opera. Speaking of which, have you seen the movie Diva? You should.

Dear June,

I am concerned because my older brother who, by the way, just turned forty, but still is sometimes clueless about women, just got engaged to someone who is not totally honest about her credentials. On her website she says she is a graduate of a really good university several states from here. I happen to know, through a friend who once lived in the town where my brother’s fiancée lived, that she dropped out after her junior year and did not finish her degree. I’m concerned because she advertises herself as a life coach giving direction to other people, and she has an affiliation with a hospital, so doctors recommend patients to her. No, she does not have a master’s in psychology, but she has certifications from a few institutes, the names of which I do not recognize.

My family has always prided itself on honesty. If my parents found out about this issue, they would be very upset. So far they love this prospective daughter-in-law and really enjoy her company. Should I do some work checking this woman out? Like going to her face-to-face and asking if she finished her B.S. at the university? Or should I call the university and see if I could find out? I know Melania Trump lied and said she had a B.A in architecture from a university in Slovenia when she actually did not even finish her first year. However, this is America, and I would like to trust the credentials I see on paper.

I look forward to your response.

—Ornery in Ohio

Dear OinO,

I am not sure why you feel that it is your place to do a background check on your brother’s fiancée. You are not going to marry her, or even hire her as a life coach, so the question whether she completed four years of college, or only three, has remarkably little bearing on your life.

You will object that it is not the fiancée’s apparent lack of a B.S., but her dishonesty, that worries you (although your concern about her not having a master’s, a degree she apparently never claimed to possess, does make me wonder a little). And it is certainly true that a person who misrepresents her educational credentials may be equally untrustworthy in other areas. But for all you know, this may be an isolated instance—or not an instance at all. Maybe that friend who “once lived” near the university got the facts wrong, or maybe your brother’s fiancée went back to school and completed her degree at a later time. Unless she is half your brother’s age, she has had plenty of years to go back to Prestigious U. She also could have finished up at another institution, in which case there may have been some on-line oversimplification about where, but not whether, she eventually got her degree—a more venial sin, I’d say.

But even if her website is a web of lies, that is not really your lookout. The person who does have some legitimate interest in her bona fides is, of course, your brother. If you raise the credentials issue with anybody, it should be him.

As to whether you should talk to him, or maintain total silence, I am on the fence. I would probably speak up as a preemptive move if I thought he was likely to hear from some other source about the credentials issue, or that you had been talking about it behind his back. But if you doubt that the Incident of the Dubious Degree will ever come to light without your spilling the beans yourself, think twice about mentioning it at all, ever.

Of course, I do not know your brother. If he is anything like you, he might consider his betrothed’s alleged conduct a major transgression, and an impediment on the order of “speak now, or forever hold your peace.” Ask yourself whether you really believe that this is how he would see it, and that he would want to know the truth. If, after serious reflection, you can say yes to both questions, speak now. Try keeping it low key, though. “Remember my friend Winnie? She knew Fiancée back in U Town. By the way, she said Fiancée never graduated. But how the hell would she know? I’m sure there’s some explanation.”

And let’s keep Melania out of this. If false educational credentials had anything to do with facilitating her marriage—which I highly doubt—our First Lady has paid the price many times over.

LA WALLY SAYS:
Stop butting in. If you want to do something, get to know the fiancée better.

Dear June,

There is this guy at the gym I find really, really attractive. I mean really. We have chit-chatted a bit, and I have also overheard him talking to other people a few times because he tends to take the elliptical right next to mine whenever he can. Or so it seems. He sounds witty and funny, although I’ve never heard him talk about anything much beyond the machines and local sports, which is how things are at the gym.

Yesterday he asked me if I’d like to go out for coffee sometime and I said sure, but we didn’t set a date because I said that I had to run off.

That was not true. The fact is that I am ambivalent, and the reason I am ambivalent is that I have noticed that (when not looking at me!) he always looks at Fox News while he’s on the equipment. I abhor Fox News. I can’t even stand to watch it. I am also very progressive in my views. Is that reason enough to reject him? What should I do? Do pheromones lie?

—Fit but Fretful in Phoenix

Dear FFP,

I don’t know whether or not pheromones lie, exactly, but I suspect that they give us an incomplete picture. Your pheromones, and Gym Guy’s, are probably accurate as all get out if the goal is to produce healthy offspring and protect them from wooly mammoths. They may also be good predictors of the physical parts of sexual compatibility even in the modern world. But they may not be so good at helping us choose people we can stand to live with, or even to date on a regular basis.

You’ve obviously got a strong physical attraction going on here—maybe even a little more than that, if your assessment of Gym Guy’s humor and wit has some basis other than his being so cute that you’ve temporarily lost all objectivity.

But you also have strong opinions about politics and society that sound diametrically opposed to those of Fox News. So the first thing you need to do is find out why Gym Guy watches it, and what he takes away from it. It would be terrific if he hates Fox and his only reason for watching it, or seeming to, at the gym is because the TV nearest your elliptical is permanently set to it. (Is he wearing headphones? Could he actually be listening to music or some cool podcast?) Or he may prefer much less conservative and biased news outlets as a rule, but use the gym as an opportunity to check out the opposition. You should find out at least this much before you reject such a cutie. Maybe a quick chat at the gym, over vending-machine drinks or bottled water, would get you over this threshold.

At the other extreme, Gym Guy may be a rabid and credulous Trumpster, who believes and agrees with everything he sees on Fox. If that is the case, I have trouble imagining how you would be able to stand listening to a word he said about politics, society, science, justice, civic duty, and a whole range of other subjects. Some people are more than happy to embark on a purely physical relationship, and others actually find political sparring a turn on, even in these days of extremism and hate. But you do not sound like either sort of person.

I suppose there is some middle ground here, some situation where Gym Guy is actually watching Fox out of a sense of allegiance or affinity, but is reasonable and open-minded enough to get along with you, maybe even develop a serious, satisfying relationship. I confess that I have trouble imagining this scenario—but it gets easier when I remember experiences I’ve had in states other than my own, or in some rural areas, where people think of Fox as the default vanilla objective news network, and where if you say “National Anthem,” they say “God Bless the USA.”

Is your part of Phoenix like that? If Gym Guy is a fox who likes and believes Fox News, can the particular bubble you live in excuse what would, among most educated people, seem like willful ignorance?

I’m guessing Naah. So my advice, in sum, is: find out if he is seriously watching that propaganda arm. If so, either reject him out of hand as a dating prospect, or have that coffee just to check him out and see if there is something you’ve missed, like that he has been living in a fallout shelter or a cult or a bowling alley in rural Oklahoma for the past several years. Or is just now starting to break free from his powerful charismatic family back at the compound.

I don’t hold out much hope. It’s a shame, though. Stupid pheromones.

LA WALLY SAYS:
Have the coffee and ask him what the deal is with Fox News. Let him know how you feel about Fox, and the two of you can take it from there. By the time your little coffee date is over, I am sure you will know whether you would be happy dating this guy.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

La Wally is the nom de June of June Cleaver‘s adult daughter. In real life, she’s an artist and entrepreneur. What’s up with her name? In choosing a pseudonym, the two of them considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons. “Wally” alone seemed too masculine and generally hideous. But “La Wally” brings to mind Catalani’s wonderful opera. Speaking of which, have you seen the movie Diva? You should.

Dear June,

While carpooling to my job last Monday, I signaled a lane change and the guy in the left lane, who had been at least ten car-lengths behind me, immediately speeded up to cut me off. As I retreated and he rushed past me I got a brief but clear look at his face, and one of my passengers remarked on his vanity plate. I could also see the guy flipping me the bird over his shoulder, right after he passed my car—whereupon he slowed back down. I have no idea why he made an obscene gesture since I am sure I was driving safely and courteously and wasn’t even slowing him down at all. He was the one acting rude and driving dangerously.

I was surprised to see his car in the company parking lot, and even more surprised to see the man himself sitting in our reception area. It turned out that he was there, at my invitation, to interview for a job in our department! It was clear that the young man had no idea I was the one he’d cut off. I saw no reason to enlighten him.

The interview with him went reasonably well. As you can imagine, I was not predisposed to like him, and I didn’t, but I have to admit that he met or exceeded all the requirements in the job description and had done his homework about the company. He also has very good paper credentials and excellent recommendations.

Of the two people who sat in with me on the interview, one thought he was terrific and the other one said that she thought he was okay, but would be at least as happy with two of the other people on our short list. The choice is on me, for various reasons. Do you think it would be ethical of me to pass this guy over when I think the car incident may be what tipped the scale for me?

—Worried in Washington

Dear Wowa,

Let’s give this guy a name. “Van” leaps to mind. Although I imagine that he was driving something cooler than a van, we can think of the name as short for “Vanity Plate.”

I do think it would be ethical, and probably also good business, to pass on this Van. You should consider yourself lucky to have been given the chance to see a side of him it could have taken months or years to discover on the job—during which time he might have made himself indispensable, or at least hard to fire.

Unlike, say, a trial or a standardized exam, there is nothing in the hiring process that requires you to base your decision solely on what is formally presented to you. As long as you do not discriminate against members of a protected group—either directly and personally, or as part of an invidious pattern like only hiring people who belong to some restricted club, or who get the nod from some exclusionary network—you are within your legal rights to base your hiring decision on pretty much any information from any source, including chance encounters outside the office, embarrassing posts on social media, web searches, or the pricking of your thumbs.

Of course, it would be ethically problematic, and highly questionable as a business practice, to make hiring decisions for arbitrary reasons totally unrelated to job performance. But your doubts do have a basis. Van’s behavior on the road gives a strong hint that he may not be the most pleasant guy to work with, project the greatest image of the company, or perform the most coolly under stress. It is possible, of course, that he was acting out of character when he cut you off and flipped you the bird—at the risk of having this sound like a treatment for a mediocre TV rom-com, perhaps the normally careful and courteous Van was so anxious not to show up late for his dream-job interview that, just this once, he drove too aggressively and then, for the only time in his life, was moved to make an obscene gesture. But I don’t believe it. And, even if I did, once is enough in a case like this, when you are choosing among candidates who don’t otherwise differ significantly.

By the way, I also find it perfectly acceptable to include in your equation that Van was not only a rude, dangerous driver, but that he also endangered and dissed you in particular. I do not know how closely you will be working with Van, but I assume that your paths will cross at least occasionally. I see no reason why you should choose to work with someone who was rude to you and gave you reason to dislike him.

—June

La Wally’s response:

Don’t hire him. You have other good choices. Why have him represent your company?

Dear June,

Over the past year I lost a great deal of weight and am much healthier and happier. I also look good, if I do say so myself. I worked hard and I am proud of my accomplishment.

But I am not so happy when this coworker of mine, whom I will call “Jefferson” although she is actually named after another president, keeps telling me that she is proud of me. It is bad enough when she says this to me in private. But it is worse when she says it to me, or even about me, in front of other people. The worst is when she says it as if speaking for some unspecified “we.” At an office lunch the other day (we are accountants, by the way) she cut into the general conversation to tell the whole table that “we are all so proud of Sally [not my real name]. Doesn’t she look great?” Luckily I had the good sense to smile graciously at the positive, if awkward, murmurs that followed; and my favorite colleague cheered me up considerably by switching the topic to a project he and I were working on and where, as it happens, I have been doing totally clever and badass work.

Am I being oversensitive, or is Jefferson being inappropriate? And, if so, what should I do about it.

—Not Sally in Nottingham

Dear Notsa,

She is being inappropriate. If all she had done was say “I’m proud of you” once or even twice, in private and with no hint of condescension in her tone—and if you had no independent reason to mistrust her motives—I would probably have advised you to take Jefferson’s praise as her gauche but well-intentioned way of saying “Way to go!” or “Impressive!” and try not to read anything more into it.

But she harped on her pride in your weight loss. She did so in front of others. She talked about you in the third person while you were present. Probably least appropriately, she included other people, and (I suppose) coworkers at that, in her unspecified “we,” as if they had been sharing—perhaps even discussing—their concern over your weight and your efforts to control it.

I see several issues in this escalation of rudeness.

The most obvious issue is Jefferson’s assuming the right to be “proud.” It is fine to take pride in the accomplishments of your children, or students you teach, or the Cub Scout den you lead, or any other person or group where you may have contributed to the success in question or have some other stake in it. Unless you are using group allegiance to denigrate or oppress somebody else, it is also usually fine to express pride in your school, city, team, or any other larger group you belong to or (as in sports fandom) identify with. It can be better than fine to say how proud you are of people with whom you are very close, like lovers and best friends, and people who have struggled with you to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, like members of your weight-loss support group or software-development team. And, although I used to hate it when my mother’s friends did this to me, it is fairly standard social practice to say you are proud of the accomplishments of people who are much younger than you. Expressions of pride are also generally acceptable from people who hold some role as superior or guide—such as your minister, doctor, mayor, counselor, or work supervisor—so long as their expressions stay relevant to their role.

Without some such connection, saying “I’m proud of you” is a bad idea. It can come off as encroaching (“I claim the sort of intimacy that allows me to say this”) or patronizing (“I have the right to judge you”).

Your colleague Jefferson may not mean any harm. For all I know, she may admire you from afar and think that her overbearing expressions of enthusiasm and false intimacy will create real closeness. Or she may mean plenty of harm: consciously or semi-consciously, she may be asserting her power and superiority, bless her heart. It is hard to tell what she is up to, which is itself unsettling.

Another issue here—if we were in criminal court, I would call it an aggravating circumstance—is the subject matter. Jefferson is not just proud; she is proud of your weight loss.

When are people going to learn that people’s weight is their own business? Even if I could write off Jefferson’s frequent, public, “we”-including kvelling about, say, your having run a marathon or published a poem as nothing more than overzealous support, we should all know by now that even positive comments about someone’s weight should be judicious and rare. I can understand why Jefferson’s having appropriated your weight in particular as her source of pride would be especially upsetting.

Another aggravating circumstance is that Jefferson is a coworker and that some or all of her antics are taking place at the office. It sounds as if she is making you uncomfortable on the on the job by focusing on matters—your size, fitness, and appearance—you rightly consider personal and irrelevant to your work. And although nothing you have said indicates any sort of direct job harassment, Jefferson may be putting some of your colleagues in a difficult position by implying that they have been joining with her in commenting on your looks or discussing your weight-loss efforts, thereby creating a stressful (if not “hostile” in the legal sense) work environment.

I don’t mean to advocate for a dreary, closemouthed, humorless, midcentury-Soviet-style workplace where people who work together every day as equals get in trouble for saying “Hey! Looking good! Great haircut!” And I certainly don’t mean to discourage work colleagues from supporting one another in their efforts at self-improvement, work-related or not. But the support must be welcome, if not actually solicited. Jefferson blew it three ways: she assumed the right to take pride in your accomplishment, she commented repeatedly on your size, and she did so publicly, at work.

Okay, so we’ve established that Jefferson’s behavior is inappropriate. But you also asked me whether you are being oversensitive, which is a slightly different question. My answer depends on why you asked me. If what you want is a value judgment, my answer is that there is nothing ethically or otherwise wrong with you for being annoyed and upset by Jefferson’s remarks. But if we are talking about the practicalities of office and community life, you might do well to steel yourself a bit more against people’s awkward personal comments, especially about your weight. Weight loss, like pregnancy, seems to bring out the unbridled busybody in adults who should know better. I suspect that, although Jefferson may be the only one to glom onto unmerited pride, other people have made unwelcome or unsettling remarks about the recent change in your appearance. For your own wellbeing, I suggest trying to grow a thicker skin for your thinner self. The way you handled Jefferson’s antics at lunch shows that you know exactly how to behave: smile, be gracious, move on. Now all you have to do is internalize this wise response. Say to yourself: “Yeah, I did great. Damn straight I’m proud,” and turn your attention to some other subject—debits and credits, the Oscars, cannelloni, anything at all—you prefer to consider.

As for what to do about Jefferson in particular, it is obviously time to tell her to stop. From your letter, it sounds as if she either wishes you well in her overbearing way or at least wants to keep up the pretense that she does. The next time the two of you have a private-ish moment, I would bring up the issue of your weight yourself. (Slide naturally into the subject if possible. “It’s amazing how much more quickly I take these stairs nowadays.” “I just got back from having my wedding ring resized.” “This old thing? Thanks. I got it at the consignment store on Maple Street. So much more fun to shop now that I’ve lost some weight.”) Then tell her that, speaking of weight, you’ve decided to ask people not to discuss your weight loss from now on. You want to move beyond it and not draw attention to that part of yourself. You are sure she understands.

Unless Jefferson makes a habit of publicly taking pride in your other accomplishments, I would probably stick to the matter of weight and dodge the whole “How dare you think you have the right to say you’re proud of me?” question, which seems inherently confrontational to me. It would be hard to call her out on this without seeming to imply (since it’s true!) either that she does not know how to behave, or that she is not as good a friend or colleague as she pretends to be. Besides, talking about the “I’m proud” aspect of her comments may simply confuse the issue for her and, as I understand it, the point is to get her to shut up entirely.

Talking to her should work. If it doesn’t, remind her, and be more firm this time. If she misbehaves yet again, and if you believe that this is affecting your work performance or environment, I suppose you could speak to H.R., or to your supervisor, but I would be in no hurry to do so. Rightly or wrongly, you might be perceived as a whiner. And you should ask yourself whether, aside from vexing you—which you can, to some extent, control—she is doing any real harm. It sounds as if the people at that lunch were put off by her conduct, and that it in no way diminished you in their eyes. As for your work life in general, I suspect that, despite Jefferson’s best efforts, your coworkers and friends give your weight loss scarcely a thought, and that the few thoughts they do give it are vague and benign and have nothing to do with your job performance. As time goes by, the recent change in your fitness and appearance will be older and older news, and Jefferson will look sillier and sillier if she is foolish enough to bring it up.

(Important note: I assumed from your letter that Jefferson holds no power or authority over you at work. If she does, I would be somewhat more disposed to consult H.R. in the event that politeness does not work. )

Congratulations on your weight loss, by the way. I know how hard it is to do what you have done and, were my manners less than impeccable, I would tell you how proud it makes me.

—June

P.S. Next time you might want to work on your pseudonyms. Readers will have a pretty easy time guessing Jefferson’s likely real name, although I suppose “Carter” or “Hayes” might work, and of course Lear went with a variant of “Reagan.”

La Wally’s response:

Jefferson is being weird, but even so, I would just let it go. I would smile and laugh it off, maybe make a joke about it. Like I would look down at myself and say: “Omigod, you’re right! I’ve lost all this weight!” Or I’d say: “If you’re so proud, where’s my prize?

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

La Wally is the nom de June of June Cleaver‘s adult daughter. In real life, she’s an artist and entrepreneur. What’s up with her name? In choosing a pseudonym, the two of them considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons. “Wally” alone seemed too masculine and generally hideous. But “La Wally” brings to mind Catalani’s wonderful opera. Speaking of which, have you seen the movie Diva? You should.

 Dear June, 

A few weeks ago my friend Mallory asked me if I would walk her dog Luther for a week while she went on vacation. Luther is a tiny Yorkie who can’t weigh more than five pounds, and Mallory is a good friend who lives in my building, so I figured that it would be a kind thing to do, and not all that difficult, especially since I am a freelancer and can easily go upstairs to get him times a day.

But yesterday a group of us were eating lunch together and I heard her say that Luther is a real escape artist and can get out of every leash or harness she has put on him. She even told a “funny” story about how he slipped out of his harness and ran off, crossed several busy streets, and was finally corralled in the local liquor store parking lot. 

After lunch I told Mallory that I could not take care of him after all—that I would come by and keep him company if she wanted, but that I was not going to be responsible for walking a dog who might run away on my watch and maybe get lost or even killed. 

Mallory is furious. She says that she will have to put Luther in a kennel because of me, that it will cost a fortune, and that she would never have taken this vacation if she knew she would have to board her dog. Then she said that even though she hoped I would reconsider and walk Luther, she was willing to compromise by sharing the cost of the kennel with me —but that she hoped I appreciated that doing so would practically break her financially. 

What do you think I should do? Was it wrong of me to renege?

—Hesitant in Holmesburg

Dear Hez,

I do not see what you did as reneging. I see it as a case where your friend failed to disclose a material fact about what she was asking you to do—namely, that there is no way to walk Luther safely. Since nobody in their right mind would agree to walk a friend’s dog if they could not do so without risking the dog’s life, I do not think it was wrong of you to refuse to walk Luther given your new knowledge. In fact, it may have been morally obligatory to say no. Nor do I think you have any obligation, legal or moral, to pay for any part of Luther’s boarding. You had agreed to do something for free—for “no consideration,” as lawyers say—and would have followed through if you had not discovered Mallory’s deception. Her expecting you to subsidize the consequences strikes me as world-class chutzpah.

But there seems to be something off about this situation. From what you overheard it sounds as if Mallory herself can’t keep Luther from wriggling away. Has she really found no way to resolve this—double harness or leash, carrying him to a fenced-in park, anything? If so, can’t she share this information with you? If not, is she willing to risk his running away every time she goes out?

Of course, she may have been exaggerating for effect at lunch. But it sounds as if she has not explained the situation this way to you—and, even if she did try to dismiss what she said as comic exaggeration, could you believe her, given how self-serving it would be for her to change her story?

I see that Mallory is not just a friend but also a very near neighbor, and that you and she are part of a lunch group, so I assume that you still want to maintain cordial relations, maybe even a real friendship, with Mallory, even if the disagreement over Luther might otherwise have soured the relationship to the point that you never wanted to set eyes on each other again. For the sake of your relationship, and because it is the kind thing to do for Mallory and the pooch, I suggest that you and Mallory try to work together towards some kind of creative compromise. Tell her that—unless, perhaps, she can find Luther some better leash/harness system, get a third party expert to attest to its effectiveness, and take you and Luther on some test runs—you must still insist that you cannot walk him and be responsible for putting him in danger. Nor will you pay for any part of boarding (unless you have lots of discretionary money and actually would prefer to do so, to make life easier for yourself.) But say that you will do whatever you can to find an alternative solution. Does your building have an enclosed yard? Is there a fenced-in park nearby where you could take this five-pound dog in a carrier?

Or, since Luther is such a teeny dog, could you just leave paper out for him—or have Mallory get one of those or one of those apartment-sized grass-patch outdoors-simulation thingies —and hang out with him in the apartment? If Mallory thinks Luther can’t be counted on to use the papers or patch, perhaps he could be confined (along with some aspirational newspapers) in the kitchen or some other place with an easy-to-wash floor. To a small Yorkie, a good-sized kitchen must feel like a city block in terms of number of steps needed to navigate, points of interest, separate and discrete territories, and so on, so I don’t think this confinement would be a real hardship. And if Mallory objects that leaving Luther in the kitchen may foster bad post-vacay elimination habits, I would point out that, for most people, the risk of their dog’s running away or getting hit by a car would outweigh the risks of some confusion about house-training. Say you will be more than happy to keep Luther company at least three times a day, give him food and water, and clean up after him, and that you will even carry him to doggy day-care if it is not too far away and she agrees to pay for it. These all sound like great deals to me.

If Mallory accepts none of these proposals, I reckon that she will just have to suck it up and pay for the kennel. (If you are so inclined, you might be able to save her one or more days’ kennel costs by agreeing to drop Luther off and pick him up, since kennel hours often make it hard to leave or retrieve animals on the day the owners are traveling, especially weekends and evenings.) If Luther does end up in a kennel, I hope he makes some dog friends while he is there and enjoys his time away from Mallory. I know I would.

La Wally’s response:
That is way too much pressure for Mallory to put on Hez. Hez should not feel that she has to walk the dog if she feels uncomfortable. As for asking Hez to share the costs of a kennel, that is just crazy.

Dear June,

My little brother Ned–he’s twelve years younger than I am–has had a girlfriend for the last ten months and my family is trying to figure out how we can keep her in the family. Our elderly mother is in love with this girl and says that she feels like a daughter. I think if Ned did something to ruin the relationship with this girl our mother would curl up and die. 

You see Ned has had many lost loves. He tells his family that he has met the love of his life, and then a few months later, when we ask him how the woman is, he makes all sorts of statements about what’s wrong with her. We all know that part of the problem is that he drinks a lot, especially on weekends, and can get very angry or silly. He’s gotten his way though life because he is very handsome, bright, and articulate, and gets away with things that my sister and I never could. We are all afraid that this won’t last. 

What can we do to make sure it does?

Sincerely,

—Sister in Springfield 

Dear Sis,

I’m afraid that there is nothing you can do to “make sure” this relationship lasts. I assume that, since Ned has been around long enough to have garnered so many lost loves, he is a grown man, at least chronologically. If he is still incapable of maintaining a stable relationship without significant outside help from his extended family, you should prepare yourself for the strong possibility that his relationship with this girl –- I think she needs a name: shall we say “Catelyn”? —will also fall apart, despite everyone’s best efforts.

Nor is that necessarily a bad thing. If Ned can’t learn to control his anger, alcohol abuse, and fault-finding, I like to think that even your elderly mother would not want her beloved Catelyn to be bound to him by ties she would find hard to break.

Does Ned recognize that he has problems? Has he sought any help—therapy, anger management, AA, or substance-abuse counseling? You say that you “all” know that “part of the problem is that he drinks a lot.” Does he also know this? And are you sure that the rest of you understand how serious and intractable his problems are likely to be? Your writing that he gets “angry” and “silly” makes me concerned that, even in your letter, you are trying to paper over some fairly alarming behavior.

Although it can be almost impossible to restrain oneself when a loved one persists in self-destructive conduct, you and your family need to accept that the motivation for change has to come from Ned, not you or Catelyn or anyone else —and that even then he and Catelyn may face many obstacles. Also bear in mind that attempting to sugarcoat, downplay, put a brave face on, etc., Ned’s history and tendencies in order to preserve his relationship with Catelyn is a generally bad idea. I suppose that you are all to be forgiven, maybe even commended, for doing what you can to salvage Thanksgiving dinner, or prevent some specific public scene—but don’t make a rule of indulging him or deceiving her. Doing so will just make life harder for everyone in the long run, with deeper disappointments and increased emotional and practical entanglements by the time the situation almost inevitably deteriorates.

Having said all this, there may be some hope! Alcoholics can recover, spoiled sons can finally grow up, and charming players can decide to settle down. There are a few steps you can take to help Ned and Catelyn help themselves, and to improve things for yourself and the rest of the family.

The obvious first step is to steer Ned towards help—which, from the tone of your letter, it sounds as if he is not currently receiving. Decide which of you would be the best emissary—or, if you think doing so would make take the matter more seriously, stage an intervention. If you know any therapists or counselors with relevant expertise, or anybody who has problems like Ned’s and does not mind discussing them, ask for assistance in how to proceed. The federal government (start with samhsa.gov) and almost every state and local government in the US also have agencies and even hotlines you can call—unfortunately, every state also has a Springfield, so I cannot be more specific.

For your own sake and if you want personal local help finding resources for Ned, I also suggest consulting a counselor yourself, at least for a single session. And check out your local Al-Anon.

How close are you to Catelyn? It sounds as if you like her. Unless you think it would be awkward to become her friend in your own right, or to stay friends if she and Ned break up, I’d consider creating or deepening an independent relationship with her. The same is true of other family members and of the extended family as a group. As long as nobody misleads her, there is nothing wrong with creating a situation where Ned’s family becomes an added reason for Catelyn to stay with him. Besides, making friends is a good thing, and many friendships outlive marriage and romance. (I count some of my own or other family member’s exes among my dearest friends.) Invite Catelyn on family and one-on-one outings. Send her news stories that made you think of her, old family photos she might like, and so on. Share confidences—but only if you feel that you can be fully honest and trust your own motives.

Is Catelyn aware of Ned’s issues? Has she already borne the brunt of them, or is he still in the earlier, rosier stage of this particular relationship? Talk to Catelyn –sympathize, join forces —if and when the time seems right. Take care not to jump the gun, though. It’s just possible that Ned may clean up his act this time, at least if he gets some help, and you certainly don’t want to scare Catelyn off when there is nothing to be scared about.

As for your elderly mother, who seems to be a large part of your reason for writing, I think you would agree that she should not figure too heavily in the Ned-Catelyn equation. Although I love and admire many elderly mothers, and hope to become one myself some day, saving their elders from (even literal) heartbreak is a terrible reason for a couple to stay together. Your efforts will be more likely to succeed, and more worthy of success, if you all think in terms of what’s best for your brother and for Catelyn.

I probably don’t need to tell you this but, just to be on the safe side: say what you like to Catelyn about how much Elderly Ma and the rest of you love her, but never tell her that you don’t think Ma would survive a breakup! Saying things like that creates a claustral feeling, a sense that you are being ganged up on, as if you were some heiress in a Victorian melodrama and your moldering noble trustees were trying to marry you off to their idiot son.

I hope that Ned and Catelyn can work it out or, at least, that this situation leaves you with a wiser brother, a worthy new friend, and a healthy mother who has reconciled herself to reality and and enjoys regular visits from that nice ex of her darling but star-crossed son.

La Wally’s response: This situation does not sound promising. All the family can really do is talk to Ned and try to get him to see what a good thing Catelyn is and how he will lose her if he does not clean up his act this time. If Ned won’t listen and you care about Catelyn, stop encouraging the relationship.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Dear June,

Three years ago my son “Jon” got married to a wonderful woman, “Beth,” and last year Beth and Jon had twin boys. I am a totally besotted grandma. Even though I know the odds are against it, I look at my grandchildren and am totally convinced that the reason I think they are the greatest, most fascinating babies in the world is because they actually are. Being with my son’s family and spoiling the boys are far and away my favorite activities.

Life in our extended family is basically quite good. Beth seems fond of my husband and me, and is becoming best friends with our daughter. Beth’s brother is also getting close to all of us. And all of us, including Beth’s folks, live less than an hour away from one another.

The problem—or, rather, the question, since I would be embarrassed to call such a minor blip in happy life and a good set of relationships a “problem”—is Beth’s parents, and especially her mother. We are Jewish and they are super-WASPs. They wear clothes with little anchors on them and so on, and she has one of those “Muffy”-type nicknames. But so far the religious/ethnic divide has not been an issue. They seemed to be fine with the kids’ ecumenical wedding, and I have never heard an anti-Semitic remark pass their lips (although the Irish have not fared so well). They even came to the twins’ bris. And we are all very pleasant and friendly to one another, exchanging photos and recipes and so on.

But Muffy is a relentless and vocal supporter both of Donald Trump as a leader, and of what I consider the Republican policy agenda’s worst elements. I suppose that her husband basically agrees with her, but he is too wise, or cowardly, or maybe uninterested, to talk politics with the rest of the family. Beth and her brother are both quite progressive—like everyone in my family—but Muffy seems willing to let the younger generation be. Not so with my husband and me, although she hardly ever talks to my husband so he is mostly off the hook.

Every time we get together Muffy presents me with new “evidence” of Trump’s greatness, or the mainstream press’s bias, or the general laziness and worthlessness of the less fortunate, or the nefariousness of anybody whose politics are to the left of Attilla the Hun, or—need I even say this?—the evil and corruption at the core of the murderous Hillary Clinton.

I do everything I can not to engage with her, but she keeps insisting that I at least give her ideas a chance, and is forever emailing me or even snail-mailing me long and totally repellent right-wing screeds. She even sends me books. She then confronts me in person or on the phone to ask whether I have read the things she sends, and gets very upset when I have not, which is just about all the time.  

I have told her again and again that I do not think we will ever agree, but that I respect and admire her as a person, and can we just steer clear of politics and enjoy our children and grandchildren? But she refuses to listen, and keeps sending me stuff and telling me that she is sure I would “come around” if I would just open my mind. Then she keeps demanding that I read the trash she gives me. She seems to be getting increasingly annoyed with me, and I am worried that our joint family gatherings will grow strained, or even that she will start refusing to see us and put Beth and Jon in a terrible position. And what if I end up having less access to the babies?  

I know that I will not “come around.” Her facts are not my facts. This is because they are not facts. And her values, at least in the political arena, seem about 100% dependent on whether they advance the interests of old white Christian money.

I know that she will never come around, either. 

So what do I do?  

—Quaking in Queens

Dear Q,

It sounds as if your question is pragmatic rather than ethical. You do not seem to be asking whether you have any duty as a citizen or a co-grandma to try to change Muffy’s views, or at least bear witness against them; or, conversely, to try to see her point of view. I can sort of understand why you have thrown in the towel here as far as ethics is concerned. As the philosophers say, “ought implies can.” If you truly believe that there is no way anything either of you can say will make any difference, you have no duty to attempt the impossible. Before we move on, though, let me at least ask that, in the future, you stop now and then to reconsider your position. Muffy may prove to be more receptive, or at least easier to wear down over time, than you—with your grandmotherly interests at risk—currently believe. And the stakes—the costs of not opposing the Muffys of this benighted nation—may climb even higher. As I write this, we are all still trying to digest 45’s astonishing response to the white supremacists and NAZIs in Charlottesville.

Now let’s look at the practical question you actually asked me.

Do Jon and Beth know what’s going on? It would be great if they, and Beth in particular, understood how upsetting and annoying Muffy is being and volunteered to intercede for you. It sounds as if this is not happening, though, and I get the impression that you do not want to burden the children at a time when they are already coping with being new parents of twins. But it would not be much of a burden if you asked for a little advice. There must be some reason Muffy restrains herself around the younger generation. They might have some good ideas, and your asking them would be a gentle way of letting them know how Muffy is acting. It may be that Muffy is spoiling for a fight—why else is she being so relentless?—and that Beth will understand this and know how to handle in her in ways you could not. If Beth and Jon do decide to have a word with Muffy themselves, so much the better.

But it may be that, at least for now, all Beth and Jon care about is family peace. Or they may be completely sympathetic and willing to help, but have no idea what to do. If, for these or other reasons, the Muffy problem remains totally in your lap, and if your chief desire is to avoid a rift with Muffy and Mr. Muffy, you might try actually reading more of the stuff she sends you. The problem there, of course, is that not only would you have to run your eyes along many repellent pages of text, but you would also probably be expected to tell her what you thought of them, which might be even more fraught and stressful than arguing with her about your refusal to read them at all. On the other hand, I suppose it is remotely possible that, if you read a whole chunk of her Trumplit with some care and sent her a well thought-out response to it, while not budging an inch, you might finally convince her that, just like a tree that’s standing by the water, you shall not be moved. But I fear that your actually engaging with her about her right-wing screeds is more likely to escalate than resolve the situation.

How about a counteroffensive? Suggest your own thoughtful, anti-Trump, or otherwise sane materials for her to read. This is another long shot. But if, after considering her character, you think it might work, you could start small—say, a collection of Paul Krugman’s articles. (She may already hate him, since he writes for the dreaded New York Times; but I like to think his being a Nobel Prize-winning economist would count for something, even with her.) If she actually reads them and wants to discuss them with you, it may make for a difficult afternoon, and you will probably get stuck reading about Hillary’s emails or The Deep State. But then you can escalate to book-length works. (Dark Money by Jan Mayer, perhaps. Or Red Notice, by Bill Bowder. I mention these because they are well worth reading—you sound like the sort of fair-minded person who would actually read a book yourself if you foisted it on Muffy—but any of your favorite sociopolitical or historical books will do.) My guess is that she probably won’t read these longer books, which will give you the perfect riposte when she asks you to read her stuff. And if she does actually get through them, then maybe some small part of her mind may open a crack and maybe, just maybe, you will have elevated the level of national discourse by a zillionth percent.

I hope that some of these ideas are helpful. But I suspect that, unless your kids come up with some great insider advice or effectively intercede for you, you will have your share of awkward, tiresome moments ahead of you with Muffy as the flip side of all those wonderful hours you have with your grandkids, feeding them their cereal and taking timeless videos and reading them their little board books. (May I suggest A is for Activist?) The good news, as I read your letter, is that I don’t see Beth and Jon ever turning against you. And I suspect that Muffy has the good sense not to give them any kind of ultimatum.

Good luck, and congratulations on the twins.

La Wally’s response:
I don’t see what Muffy can do if Beth lays down the law. Talk to Beth. At the end of the day, this Muffy woman supports Trump, so how can you talk to her?

Dear June,

Rachel, Maya, and I have been dear friends since third grade. When Rachel and her girlfriend, Sue, got married two years ago, Maya and I both gave readings at the ceremony.

Rachel and Maya never moved back after college, but I still live in my hometown. A few weeks ago I ran into Maya’s mother at the grocery store and the subject of Rachel came up. I asked her whether she’d heard that Rachel and Sue were about to have a baby. Maya’s mom said that she hadn’t and looked a bit confused. I told her when the baby was due, and that Rachel was the biological mother. We chatted for a little while longer about Maya’s mom’s favorite subject—how wonderful Maya and her brothers are, in every possible way—and said goodbye.  

But about a week ago Maya called me and started chewing me out about having “outed” Rachel to her (Maya’s) mother. She told me that Rachel was really upset, and that I should call her and apologize. 

I was flabbergasted. Isn’t getting married at an official, legal, public ceremony, and having a kid together, about as out as you can get? What should I do?

—Absolutely Astonished in Albany

Dear Triple A,

Maybe I am missing something. I can imagine circumstances where a couple could be totally, publicly, unquestionably out in one place or subculture and not in another, or where someone might want to hide their relationship from, say, an elderly unregenerate relative. But I don’t see why you would think this was one of those situations, unless you were told. Apparently you were not told, or you would not be “flabbergasted.”

The situation seems especially odd given that you, Maya, and Rachel are all such close friends. Wouldn’t one of them have clued you in at some point—especially during the wedding preparations—that Maya’s mom was supposed to be kept in the dark?  All I can think of is that they somehow thought it would be obvious—say if Maya’s mom was a crusader in some anti-LGBTQ organization, or a devout member of a homophobic church. You do not give any indication that she is, though.

Unless I am indeed missing something, I think it was totally reasonable and natural for you to mention Rachel and Sue’s baby. Although it is almost never right to out someone, you had no reason to assume you were outing anybody, and every reason to assume you were just sharing good news. You did nothing wrong.

Of course, being in the right is not always the whole story where friendship is concerned. I would consider calling Rachel (or writing, if you prefer) to tell her that you are sorry she is hurt, but that you had no idea she was not out to everybody and would never, ever, do anything to hurt her. You might add that, as far as you could tell, Maya’s mom was much more interested in her own children than anybody else’s.

I find it hard to drum up any emotion at all about Maya, since all I know about her is that she called you and chewed you out. For all I know, Maya is the one who fomented all this by conveying her mom’s disapproval, or chagrin, or whatever to Rachel, and driving the exhausted new mother into an unhappy state. And of course Maya may be exaggerating or mischaracterizing Rachel’s or even Mom’s response.

Now that I think of it, why does it matter that Rachel and Sue are out to Maya’s mother? Do they ever see her? Can she harm them in any way?

Friendship is such hard work. I hope that this all blows over and that everyone involved stops being hurt and gossipy and weird in the very near future.

La Wally’s response:
If Rachel is a very good friend, just apologize. Say: “I am sorry I upset you, but I had no idea.”

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

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ASK JUNE: The Barb-Tongued Aunt and the Menacing Gym Rat

Dear June, 

My mom’s big sister, Aunt Barb, loves to criticize me. She is never openly mean, but always “helpful,” and in fact many of her worst zingers take the form of backhanded compliments. She will tell me that I have a beautifully proportioned figure, and so imagine how great I would look if I could just lose 10 or 20 pounds. Or that she always regretted that my parents didn’t force me to practice more, because there is a real chance I inherited my grandparents’ musical talent but now we will never know. The other day she told me that I am a nice person inside, but should pay attention to the way my face looks “in repose,” because people might think I was angry or unpleasant. I am pretty sure this was her way of saying that I should smile more because I have Resting Bitch Face. 

I’m a rising junior in college, where I now live in a year-round university apartment with three other students. But my school is not far from home, so when Aunt Barb flies in from Phoenix to stay with my folks every six months or so, I always give in to my mother and come over for dinner, which is what happened last week. This is when Aunt Barb gave her opinion about my face in repose, whatever that even means. 

For some reason that was the last straw, maybe because she seemed to be objecting to me for just being me. We were all sitting at the dinner table at the time —my parents, my younger brother Jason, and Barb. Mom stared down at her plate. Dad pretended he hadn’t heard. My brother took the opportunity to snag the last ear of corn. I looked at them all and this strange calmness came over me, at which point I said: “Listen, Aunt Barb, we are both adults now. I never make negative remarks about you, so stop making them about me. In fact, don’t make any remarks about me at all.” Then I stood up, kissed my parents, said I had an exam coming up, got into the old car my parents let me use, and drove back to school. 

Now my mom says that Aunt Barb’s intentions were good, and that I was cruel and rude, and should apologize. Mom also tells me that Barb burst into tears after I left. She also reminded me that Barb is not some stranger, but a close relative who considers herself a sort of second mother to me. She says Aunt Barb is part of that village it takes to raise a child.

What should I do? I do feel bad that I left poor Mom to cope with Barb—I am sure that Dad and Jason escaped to Dad’s man cave the minute the tears started —and I told Mom I was sorry for deserting her. But my aunt has no right to make comments like that about me. I do not think I was wrong to speak up, so why should I apologize to my aunt?

—Goaded in Gloucester City

Dear GGlo,

You are right about your Aunt Barb’s barbs. They are destructive. If she shot them at someone over whom she holds less emotional power, her various jibes and insinuations might simply be annoying. Funny, even. But she does have power over you, as many older relatives tend to; and, as the law and my sense of ethics require, you have to take your victim as you find her.

As for her intentions’ being good, I’m not sure —to quote you —what that even means in this case. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that your aunt may not have any conscious plan to hurt your feelings or damage your ego when she lets fly with one of her zingers. She may just have gotten into the habit of trying to “improve” you, and never really reflects about the matter. But the fact is that she is abusing her supposed authority, and that the things she says would strike almost anybody as hurtful. To borrow, again, from the law, and perhaps P.G.Wodehouse, I believe in holding aunts responsible for consequences any reasonable aunt could have foreseen —and it is easy as pie to foresee that you’d be hurt, not helped, by sniping remarks about your facial expressions, weight, and lost musical potential. You held her accountable, and now she knows.

As for your aunt’s special status, I agree that there may have been situations in your life when she had more right to offer constructive criticism than some stranger or distant acquaintance. But none of your examples sounded the least bit constructive. They wouldn’t have passed muster even if they had come from your own mother, and even if you were still a little kid.

Yes, it can take a village to raise a child. But you are not a child, and officious belittling comments have nothing to do with successfully raising one.

I wish you could just laugh off Barb’s barbs. I wish we could all laugh when faced with criticism like hers. But it is totally understandable that you can’t, so I think you were well within your rights when you objected to her negative comments.

I also believe, although without quite the same complete sympathy, that you were justified in asking her not to make any remarks about you, even positive ones. Given her history with you, I can see why you might worry that even comments she genuinely considers complimentary, or harmless and funny, or fond, might not come out that way. And, to go a step further, I agree with Alice when she tells the Mad Hatter that people “should learn not to make personal remarks…It’s very rude.” Even neutral or positive remarks can be intrusive. Obviously this is not always the case—it is almost always fine to praise a bride and groom, a baby, or a performance. But it’s wise to think twice, and make sure that the circumstances and your relationship give you the right to speak, before commenting on almost anything else, about almost anybody else. Barb clearly lacks a sense of boundaries. Asking her to avoid personal remarks entirely seems fair on your part, although not exactly saintly.

If apologizing to Aunt Barb depended solely on whether she should have shot those slings and arrows, and whether you were right to oppose them, I would give you the all clear and tell you not to even think of apologizing. I do not think it would be morally wrong of you, strictly speaking, not to apologize, or even to discuss the matter again.

But, depending on the circumstances, it may be unkind of you. Or tiresome. Apologies are not always simply about who’s in the right. It’s one thing if Barb is just a mean bossy woman who takes time off from her rich, full life so that she can gratuitously insult and intrude on younger people for kicks. It’s another if she is idle and lonely, your family is central to her existence, and she really does believe that she has the right—or, God help her, the duty!—to offer her opinions. Think not just about rights, but also about Aunt Barb’s life and her motives (and about your own fragility, of course) before you decide what to do.

I am not normally a fan of half-apologies, but in this instance, and if you are so inclined, you might try writing Aunt Barb a little note saying that you are sorry about leaving the table so abruptly, that you love her, and that you are looking forward to seeing her the next time she visits. (With any luck, that’ll be when you take a semester abroad.) I suggest that you write, instead of doing anything in real time, so that Barb won’t have the opportunity to set you off with some new put-down or guilt trip —and, of course, so that nobody talks about the precipitating incident itself. But since Barb also sounds like the kind of person who will parse your every written sentence, I suggest that, if you do decide to write her, you keep your note short and clear, and that you close with something like “I hope this settles the matter for you, as it does for me. Thanks for your concern and love.” A parting shot like that may not shut her up, even temporarily, about either the specific incident or your overall need for improvement, but it’s worth a try.

Whether you decide to apologize, half-apologize, or do nothing, you should also talk to your mother. It doesn’t sound as if she is paying much heed to your side of things. You’ve given me no reason to think that your parents are anything but fond and proud of you, so perhaps your mother just has very high standards of hospitality, or deference to elders, or general forbearance. But when the visiting elder in question is not just being boring or giving general offense, but actually singling you out for criticism, your mom should at least listen to your concerns, if not actively support you.

Perhaps your mother is in complete sympathy with you, but just wants to get her big sister off her back and have peace in the family. No doubt she has her own issues with Barb. I hope that, even if you cannot totally agree on Barb-control tactics, you and your mother can at least commiserate over a mani-pedi or something.

I also hope that this blows over with minimal fuss on all sides. Aunts can be a trial. I was blessed with several splendid aunts, but I also had one whose unsolicited advice about my clothes, friends, and most basic life choices still haunts me sometimes. Although she died almost twenty years ago, there are moments even now when I have to hug somebody, or play Bob Marley really loud, to drown out her voice. Whatever you do in terms of apology or other rapprochement, make every effort to disregard what Aunt Barb actually says.

La Wally’s response:
If she wants to, the niece can apologize for the way she said it, but not for what she said. And she does not even have to do that.

.

.

Dear June, 

I belong to a gym near my office and work out there several times a week. I try to go in the late afternoon when the bustling gym is as quiet as it ever gets. The cavernous locker room is sometimes almost empty, but one guy is almost always in there at the same time I am.  

This man—I don’t know his name, but I will call him Bob—has struck me as a bit odd since the first time I really noticed him, which was about three months ago. One odd thing is that he spends so much time just hanging out in the locker room after he puts on his clothes. (He has nice clothes, which is not surprising given how upscale and pricey this gym is. I would never have joined up if there were anywhere cheaper within walking distance.) He used to just sort of sit and fuss with his gym bag. But lately he has taken to shouting at himself in the mirror and pacing furiously up and down the rows of lockers, muttering and punching the air. 

Seeing how well-tended he is, and how much this gym costs, Bob must have a home and some resources, and probably a job. I don’t think he has ever damaged anything. And though he does object when I sit down or put my towel on the far end “his” bench—which is over six feet long!—he has never said anything really aggressive to me. In fact, he has never said anything else to me at all. But he does not seem well.  

What should I do?

—Waffling in Washington

Dear Wawa,

Do you think that Bob is degenerating to the point of becoming a danger to himself or others, as the mental health commitment statutes say? If so, you should definitely speak to someone in authority at the gym at your earliest opportunity. We live in a time and place where a man who shouts at mirrors might one day whip out a gun and shoot himself, the mirror, or some third party. Bob’s loved ones might also need to know that he is acting out in public and may be off his medications or otherwise heading toward a crisis.

But if you have no reason to think that Bob is anything beyond unhappy and very strange, I’d be more circumspect. Keep an eye on him for a while longer. Then, if he still appears to be going downhill, seek out someone at the gym who seems experienced and reasonable and knows the clientele. This might be another gym member who has been around for a while, but would more likely be a manager or supervisory-level employee at the gym. Talking to another member has the benefit of keeping the matter unofficial for the time being; consulting someone who works at the gym has the benefit of seeming less like gossip —and it takes the matter out of your hands.

If you do speak to the gym management, try not to say anything that might get poor old Bob summarily booted out of the place. For all you know, the opportunity to lift weights and shout at himself may be his only relief from a stressful job and home. Be calm and noncommittal: “You know the guy who usually comes in at about 4:00? Big white guy, maybe fifty, bright red hair, nice suits? What’s the story with him? He seems a bit upset lately.” If you are lucky, you will get an answer that explains the situation. “You must mean Tim Wickersham. One of our oldest members. He’s had a bit of a drinking problem since his wife left him, but we’re keeping an eye on him.” If the employee can’t or won’t answer you, assume that they will ask around or look into the matter, and let it go, for now.

By the way, I am assuming that your main concern is Bob’s welfare, not your own comfort. Not that there is anything wrong with your objecting to being rattled by some guy who runs around shouting in the locker room at the fancy gym that costs you lots of money. You have a right to some calm and order while you are dressing and undressing, and maybe trying to concentrate or achieve mindfulness or pump yourself up or cool yourself down or sculpt your mustache or whatever else reasonably sane people do in locker rooms. You have my permission to complain to the management even if all you are after is peace and quiet, not help for Bob. On the other hand, I would not put you at the top of my mensch list.

One more suggestion: find another bench. I assume that there are several of them in that cavernous locker room.

With luck, Bob will get some help, if only from the passage of time, and will subside back into a mere oddball, and then into a normal harried financier or lawyer or neurologist, while you keep up with your regular workouts and develop an imperturbable psyche and spectacular quads.

La Wally’s response:
I have no idea. Is Wawa just being nosy, or does he actually care? And if he tells the people who run the gym, what can they do? I’d just let the weird guy be —or start up a conversation with him, for God’s sake.

.

.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Image credit: Pixabay

Dear June,

Please help me!

All my life I have been a great reader. I was the kind of kid who haunted the local library and read books under the covers with a flashlight after lights out. In college I always did the recommended as well as the required reading, even in courses like Rhetoric in the Sixteenth Century. Reading one or two literary novels a week is pretty much what got me through business school, and in the years since then my favorite escape has always been to a bookstore, for browsing and sampling and reckless purchasing. My house, and now my devices, are bursting with books. 

But although the books still trickle in—gifts, usually or late-night whims ordered from my phone—I seem to have hit some kind of wall. Without noticing it while it was happening, I have stopped reading, except for work and some magazines and on-line news articles. A few weeks ago I realized that it had been almost six months since I read a novel, or any non-work book all the way through, and that last one was for a book group where I was presenting.

When I try to read in bed, I fall asleep. When I try to sit in a chair and read, I usually lose my concentration, or remember something else I should be doing. When I listen to books in the car, my mind wanders and I have to keep replaying stuff until I am out of patience and just switch to music or a podcast. I tried setting aside some time in the morning before work, but that was a bust because I cannot survive without checking my email and other media as soon as I wake up, and once that happens I am gone—all caught up in emailing my coworkers, reading a link to some story about the latest presidential scandal, making an angry call to my senator, playing Solitaire to calm down, etc.

I feel as if I have lost a whole world, and a part of myself. Any ideas?

—Degenerating in Dover, Delaware

Dear D in DD,

Could you be depressed? I am not an expert in clinical psychology, but every depression screener I have ever seen asks whether the subject has lost interest in, or no longer enjoys, activities that used to be pleasurable. Another standard question is whether it has become harder to concentrate. Although you write about just one area where you’ve experienced these changes, it’s an area that used to be central to your life. This, along with your letter’s tone of sadness and powerlessness, and your new distractibility, are signs that you may have some sort of depression or dysthymia that goes beyond reading. I suggest consulting a therapist, or your primary doctor.

I can think of a whole menu of possible reasons why non-required reading is getting harder for you—any of which may be manifestations of, or coexist with, or contribute to, some broader problem like depression or anxiety, but any of which could also just be its own à la carte obstacle.

One biggie is electronic devices and their ever-increasing addictiveness. Flitting around on-line, bouncing between games and news and stores and social media and puppies playing with fawns, to say nothing of all those places where some life-changing communication about your job may be lurking—is so much more seductive than sustained reading, especially if your resistance is already down thanks to the sleep deprivation your devices help cause. And it doesn’t help that there are legions of people out there whose lives are devoted to grabbing your attention.

I urge you to work out some new strategy to free up fifteen or twenty minutes’ sustained fiction-reading time every morning before you look at any of your devices. Do you think you could try jumping out of bed as soon as your alarm (preferably on a dedicated clock) goes off? Once on your feet, dash into the bathroom, splash water on your face and/or brush your teeth, pee if you need to, and head for the chair near which you have left some worthy but not-terribly-challenging book whose place you bookmarked the day before. If this seems utterly impossible—if you are sure you’ll never be able to concentrate until you know about some work deadline, the latest nuclear threat, or the number of likes on your Schnauzer’s recent Instagram post—I suppose you could try setting a second alarm, or hitting your snooze button, and checking your devices only during that interval–as long as you can manage to make yourself jump up after the second ring. I doubt if I could, especially given how crazy and scary the news is these days.

The crazy, scary news, whether you get it from a device or a print source or even an actual live human, is another biggie. Every day seems to bring another cause for anger and fear, another urgent problem to work on—or at least to read about endlessly and feel guilty about not working on. Just keeping up with the daily barrage of outrages, much less doing anything about them, can feel like a full-time job, leaving no time and little calm for sustained reading of literature.

I strongly believe that we should not turn away from what’s happening in our country. But everyone needs restoration and perspective. In your case and mine, reading fiction has been a source of both for most of our lives. Hard as it may be to resist the horrible fascination of current events, the “great readers” of the world need to find ways to keep non-required reading alive. It is good for our mental health, good for writers, good for the culture—so in that sense it is “required” of us.

Not in an eat-your-vegetables way, though. This is a time in your fiction-reading life when it is fine to start with pie and ice cream and wine and tortilla chips. Just go for good pie, etc. Good genre fiction, for example. Literary novels you’ve heard are suspenseful, or romantic, or exotic, or whatever it is you like best. Novels you love to reread. Some of the many great YA books. Rereading beloved novels and stories can work, and so can reading aloud to a loved one (and perhaps being read to, unless you are easily lulled). And what about well-written nonfiction or poetry, for variety’s sake, at least as a stopgap?

This may not have anything to do with the problem you are experiencing, but I have noticed, and others have have pointed out to me, that reading literary fiction feels lonelier than it used to. It is getting harder and harder to find a brick and mortar bookstore; and for every book your friends are discussing there are half a dozen movies or hot, critically-acclaimed TV series. Reading a novel can feel a bit like hitching up old Dobbin when everybody else is opening the app that summons their self-driving hybrid. One remedy for this sort of isolation and discouragement is, of course, the book club. You mentioned that you did manage to read a book when you were the presenter at your club. Can you present more often? Join another club?

Despite all this talk about clinical symptoms and national politics and trends, your reading problems may actually have one or more simpler causes. Your eyes may be changing. If they are, words on the page may be harder to follow. Or you may need more light than you used to—which may be part of what sends you off to your bright, clear devices and opens you up to all their distractions. Farsightedness—the dreaded “presbyopia”—can start earlier in life than most people think, as can several other vision problems.

Or you may be sleep-deprived, whether from anxiety or apnea or plain old overwork (or, again, taking your devices to bed). Insufficient sleep can seriously mess up your concentration. And—even if you can usually still concentrate like all get out—when you are tired, and stressed from a long day, and finally sitting in a soft chair at home, doing what you have done all your life for comfort and consolation—viz., reading a work of fiction—it is easy to see how you can drift off.

Or you may be at a time in your life when you are stressed or overextended in ways you’ve never had to cope with before. Kids and job? Kids and job and the current administration? Losses, aging parents, financial worries, student loans? If so, cut yourself a break. Try not to give up entirely on reading fiction for pleasure, but don’t let your struggles to get lost in a book become yet another source of anxiety. Make reading as easy for yourself as you can.

To sum up: Do try to lighten up on the electronics, and check out any of the possible mental and physical issues I’ve raised that sound plausible to you. But I am sure you will be fine. With time, patience, and a little effort, fiction will bring you joy again. You may just be going through an interlude of podcasts and posts until the right book comes along and revives your interest. Enthusiasm tends to ebb and flow, and yours happens to be at an ebb. I would not read too much into it.

La Wally’s response:
Not reading and not being happy are different. People change, bodies and minds change. If D in DD can find other ways to be happy, then where’s the problem? If not, they should try harder to read. June can probably help with that.

.

Dear June,  

I have my share of strong emotions, but have been told that I am on the uptight, reserved end of the spectrum. My best friend Jasmine, not so much. I find her expressive and touchy-feely to a fault. She thinks otherwise and just went off to a week-long retreat to where you “get in touch with your feelings” by playing trust games and drinking wine in hot tubs and telling twenty total strangers your innermost thoughts and deepest secrets. I would rather spend a week stuck in an elevator. 

Now that she is back she is after me to tell her what I consider her faults: all the things about her that irritate me or that I think she should try to change. She says that true friends do not sugarcoat the truth, and that the deepest relationships take work.

So I told her that what bothered me most about her at present was her nagging me about “clearing the air,” as she puts it. But apparently this does not get me off the hook because it is a complaint about the process itself. Oy. Then she announced that she would start, and told me that it really annoyed her that I talk so much about my family. She was about to tick off another item on what I suspect was a good-sized list of my shortcomings, but I told her to stop right there, that I already knew about plenty of areas for self-improvement and did not want to learn about any more just at the moment. She decided that she was cool with my being that way, but says that she feels differently and is demanding what she calls “complete honesty” from me.

What am I supposed to do? There are plenty of things about Jasmine that irritate me. She is forever singing along, loudly and not very well, and drowning out whatever music happens to be playing. She is a serious humble-bragger. She always insists on itemizing every last item on checks when we go Dutch, and prorating the tax and tip. She jumps in with her own suggestions when I am talking and have trouble finding the right word. I could go on—in fact, I am starting to get into it. But I have no desire to tell her about any of this stuff. I love her the way she is, and will be fine if she never changes. I also don’t want to hurt her feelings or start any arguments.

—Pressured in Prescott

Dear Press,

I’m with you here. Mum’s the word. Ixnay on the aultsfay. The picture your letter gives of Jasmine and your relationship with her convinces me that giving her what she’s asking for would be a terrible idea. For one thing, she may not really want complete honesty about her shortcomings so much as reassurance that you don’t see any, or at least not anything major. Her humble-bragging, and the very fact that she is being so persistent in her quest, strongly suggest that there is an insecure heart beating beneath Jasmine’s overbearing, singing, interrupting exterior.

And even if, unlike about 99% of the people I’ve come across, your friend genuinely wants to see herself as others—you, anyway—see her, that doesn’t mean your telling her the truth, the whole, truth, etc., would turn out well. Telling her about any, much less all, of the things about her that bother you could put a strain on your relationship if the two of you never allude to the matter again—or lead to words one or both of you would regret if you do. Or it might make her unhappy, or cramp her style. Take the singing, for example. As long as it doesn’t really get to you, why not let her keep enjoying herself without getting all self-conscious about her voice and maybe going silent? (I do realize that I am making a big leap here. If you think that Jasmine would just laugh off any comments on her singing, or actually sing more softly but with equal gusto, disregard this particular bit of advice.) Your friend might end up doing a lot of second-guessing of herself, or even of your regard for her. And of course she could get angry—even feel betrayed—if the unvarnished opinions she demanded turn out to be more than she bargained for.

I’m not saying that, if anything she does really bothers you, you should not speak up. One day you may find that you’ve lost all patience with something about her—my candidate would be her habit of jumping into conversational pauses and putting words in your mouth. If you do become seriously annoyed, you should of course let her know. (Suggestion: start with good-humored protests the next few times she does whatever it is. If she persists, object more seriously in some later conversation where you can recollect the emotion in tranquility.) But objecting to a single habit or quality that is seriously bothering you is totally different from presenting your friend with a laundry list of negatives, none of which appears to pose any threat to your friendship.

Now on to the harder part: how to resist? A simple refusal doesn’t seem to be working. Is there any chance she will lose interest and/or move on to some other enthusiasm? If so, I would suggest just putting her off a while longer with semi-jokes and evasions and the like. “You know I think all my friends are perfect.” Or, if she would like something edgier: “Oh, I couldn’t, Jasmine—the list would go on for days.”  Or: “You know I don’t even know how to think about stuff like that. I’m way too uptight.”

If she persists, you might try turning the tables: “Why does this matter so much to you? Is there something you’re afraid I’ll say?” I suppose this is a long shot, but if she is easily distracted as well as self-absorbed, it might take the place of your actually providing a fault inventory. You might also toss her a bone or two in the form of fairly innocuous, easily-fixed annoyances: perhaps there are some particular song lyrics she gets wrong, or maybe she is always forgetting her promise to have diet soda on hand when you come for lunch. But these may not satisfy her; besides, if you put these forward as all the habits you find annoying, you are being more deceitful than is strictly necessary.

My ideal answer—it may not work, but it’s heartwarming and honest—comes from some advice I think I got from my father, although he may have read it somewhere first (turns out he did not invent that joke about people who live in grass houses and stow thrones), or I may have read it somewhere myself and imputed it to him. Anyway, the basic idea is that people, and I guess friendships as well, are like fine watches. Why take the risk that tinkering with some small part of the beautiful, complex mechanism might affect the other parts in some unanticipated and possibly irreparable way?

If none of the other evasive tactics work, try the watch metaphor. Tell your friend that you honestly think she is without major fault. Reassure her that, if anything she says or does ever strikes you as really objectionable, or might harm your friendship, you will certainly let her know—but that, as things now stand, she is a fine Swiss mechanism, and so is your friendship, and they ain’t broke.

La Wally’s response:
You should say to Jasmine: “I don’t want to go there. That is not the kind of person I am, and you should respect that.” If she keeps after you until you can’t stand it any more, then is the friendship worth it?

.

.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Photo by Gonzalo Arnaiz on Unsplash

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Dear June,

I have a friend who is forever posting his game scores on social media. This seems harmless to me. He knows that doing well in a game does not make him a better person, or anything—he just likes to have fun showing off and talking trash. And I do think he is proud of his skill at games.

But lately he has gotten into word games and puzzles, and is trying to suck me in. Keeps sending me challenges and telling me that I could never match his scores and so on. The thing is that I am a total ace at most games and puzzles involving words, and based on what he has posted I am way, way better than he is. I do not want to burst his bubble by showing him that, to take two examples among many, my average Words With Friends word score is 32 to his 19, and I solve the Times mini-crosswords in about half the time it takes him. Yet part of me wants to show him and our mutual on-line friends that I am a word goddess, and certainly not afraid to play him. What do you think?  Would it be wrong to blow him away?

—Tempted in Tempe

Dear Temp,

I think that, unless this fellow’s ego is fragile to the point of mental illness, there is nothing wrong with accepting his invitations to play against him in two-player games, or playing your best once you do accept.

It is totally understandable, especially given the way your friend has been goading you, that you’d want to show off a little, maybe even take him down a peg—especially if you suspect that he is underestimating you because of your gender or for some other annoying, short-sighted reason.

But public bragging at his expense is another matter. I do not think you should post or otherwise bruit about the results of any contest between the two of you. Nor should you publicize your scores in crossword puzzles, or any other games where you are basically playing against yourself, if your primary aim in doing so is to compare your scores to your friend’s and show him up. If your friend pushes you too far, I could see (though I would not exactly commend) your using some private means to set him straight about your relative abilities at crossword puzzles and other one-player games, if only to put an end to his trash talk. But publicly flaunting your superiority over him in particular would be unkind, to say nothing of tacky—unless you are absolutely certain that your friend is bragging and cajoling you totally in fun, and it does not sound to me as if fun is the only thing that’s going on here.

Sometimes it is hard to be way, way better than other people. Being a word goddess entails a certain level of responsibility. Don’t hide your light—but don’t be a jerk, either. If you examine your motives case by case, I am sure you will know where to draw the line.

June

P.S. Morality aside, it may not be wise to take your friend on: such lopsided play is likely to frustrate him and bore you. Your friend might even grow unpleasant and resentful. If that happens, I advise you to stop playing him. Be gracious in victory, and tactful about giving him the boot. But promise me never to minimize, explain away, or apologize for your superpowers. All too many goddesses—and a few gods, too—fall into this trap.

Dear June,

My sister is about to have a baby girl—her first child. For privacy reasons I don’t feel that I can tell you the actual name she has chosen for her daughter. Suffice it to say that my sister wants to name her kid after the drug she credits with making the pregnancy possible. She says that the name is interesting, and will be a conversation starter! What has actually happened so far, conversation-wise, is that my mother nearly had a coronary when she heard the name, and my brother had to run out of the room to control his hysterical laughter. I have told my sister several times that it’s wrong to inflict a name like that on a kid. She tells me to butt out. Is there anything I can do?

—Apprehensive in the Big Apple

Dear App,

Normally I would advise against interference, or even disagreement, with a parent where baby names are concerned. But unless there’s some fertility drug named Madison, or perhaps an erectile dysfunction remedy called Brittany Sue, your sister’s plan strikes me as borderline abusive. I hate to think of poor little Cialis during roll call in middle school homeroom. Or little Bromocriptine struggling to find a shorter version of her name, one she can live with. I suppose that little Clomid or Pergonal might survive childhood and adolescence with nothing worse than some discreet snickers from a few adults—but I doubt even that, given how mean some kids can be, and how much time they spend typing words into search engines. And what if your sister owes her success to Viagra?

I note that you have not mentioned a father or other co-parent. If there is one, I strongly advise you to enlist his or her aid. If not, I suggest advising your sister to poll the sixth- and seventh-graders in her part of the world so she can get some idea of what her daughter’s life will be like with a name like Gonadotropin or Serophine. (Actually, that last one’s not so bad. If she plans on naming her daughter after that particular estrogen-blocking drug, you might want to back off and content yourself with calling the baby “Sara” whenever possible.)

Does your sister especially like any of her medical providers?  If so, and if one or more of these people have reasonable names, you might suggest that she could better express her gratitude by honoring a fellow human instead of a non-sentient chemical compound. Or perhaps you could get out the old photo albums and try to drum up support for a beloved grandmother, or a recently-deceased great aunt? Or how about suggesting that, as is the Jewish custom with the names of departed loved ones, she honor the medication (or whatever the hell it is she is doing with it) by giving her daughter a name with the initial of the drug instead of its full appellation: Victoria for Viagra, Luisa for Lupron, and so forth?

I am grasping at straws here. Frankly, your sister’s proposal is so, um, unusual that it is hard to imagine how one might reason with her about it. And I hesitate to advise your seeking outside help from her clergyperson, mentor, midwife, etc. Your sister would resent such active interference, and might even become estranged from you just when she and sweet baby Repronex need you most. You may just have to hope that, as you sister’s delivery date approaches, the idea of giving her daughter an embarrassing, laughable name will start to seem less attractive.

In the meantime, think of a good, totally inoffensive nickname for the baby and try to get everybody around your sister to start using it.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Image credit: Colin Maynard on Unsplash

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Dear June,

I go to a very nice local dentist who charges rather high prices but sometimes gives struggling families a break. Over a year ago my husband and I both lost our jobs, right after we had bought a house that was kind of a stretch. Suffice it to say that our finances are a total mess, and I told my dentist that we were switching to yearly cleanings for the kids, and that I would rather just have my tooth pulled instead of getting a root canal and crown, because we simply could not afford it. He said that he would give me a lower price and a payment plan, but I could not afford that, either. So then he gave me a drastically reduced rate, practically free service, which I thought was really sweet. But then a neighbor of mine, who is—I know this is complicated, but this is how gossip works in my neighborhood—the cousin of the wife of one of my dentist’s partners, told me how sorry she was to hear about my financial problems, but said how thoughtful and generous it was of Doctor Bountiful (not his real name, although I am tempted to use it!) to be helping me out. So he must have been telling his wife and perhaps other people about my family’s money situation. Is this ethical? He may not have said anything much about my actual treatment, except that he must have mentioned that I had a crown put in because my neighbor knew that. But even talking about the financial stuff, is there a duty of confidentiality? The fact is that I care much more about people knowing what desperate condition we are in than knowing about whether I had my tooth fixed!

Is there anything I can do about this? I don’t want to sue or file a complaint or anything, even if I had a chance of winning. Even just talking to him I would be worried about antagonizing him, since he has been so nice to me. And I might need him to be nice to me and the kids again in the future. But I still wish there were some way I could let him know that he should not be behaving like this.

Thanks,

—Embarrassed in Englewood

Dear Em in En,

Dentists and their employees, like doctors, do have a duty to protect their patients’ personal health information (PHI). Federal law requires it. The general, somewhat oversimplified rule is that, unless you or a court of law asks for it, your dental-care providers can only release PHI for reasons that are relevant to providing treatment or securing payment. The American Dental Association has its own privacy rules, and local professional associations, as well as state authorities, usually also have longstanding rules about privacy and confidentiality that apply to health information, medical or dental.

Whether information about billing and payment, and information about your personal finances, count as health information is more of a grey area, to me anyway. I believe that they do, for several reasons. But this does not really matter, since whoever told tales also let it be known that you got a crown from Dr. Bountiful, which is clearly covered by privacy rules. And you do not plan to take any formal action anyway.

The real questions, then, are whether what was done to you was wrong, and what you can do about it.

It was wrong, of course. Even if the law and rules of professional ethics did not forbid this violation of your right to privacy, basic human ethics certainly would. Most people want to keep their financial situation private, especially if they are having difficulties. Many people would also just as soon not have it be known that they’ve been the object of charity. There may be good reasons for discretion—someone’s reputation, perhaps even their livelihood, may depend on whether this information is revealed, and in what way. But there does not need to be a reason: we should all respect one another’s privacy in areas where we know, or should know, that people value it.

Dr. Bountiful, or somebody who works with him, behaved badly. They may have been careless—by, say, letting themselves be overheard, or leaving papers out where they could be seen by an unauthorized person. Or they may have been heedless blabbermouths who placed their desire to gossip over your right to privacy, which I find worse. Or they may have actually thought about what they were doing and decided that giving somebody treatment for free destroys the right to privacy, which I find worst of all.

Actually, it may be worse yet if one or more of the divulgers was not just gossiping about being charitable to you, but actually bragging about it. I am a big fan of heeding Matthew 6 and not doing your charitable deeds “before men, to be seen by them.” Matthew tells us that when being charitable, you should “not let your right hand know what your left is doing.” His main focus is on getting your reward in heaven, while mine is on not being condescending and generally tacky, but we end up in the same place—as does the great Maimonides, by the way.

While I’m at it, let me add that, from a treatment perspective, loose lips like those at Dr. Bountiful’s office create a loss of trust that could interfere with the dentist- patient relationship in the future—or that might, in fact, discourage you and your family from seeking treatment from him or anybody else until your situation becomes dire.

Yes, you are thinking, but is there anything I should do about this? Anything I can do?

What you obviously can’t do is undo the harm Dr. Bountiful’s practice has already done. You can try to contain the damage by downplaying your anxiety if anyone mentions it again—say something like “yes, that was nice of Dr. B,” and have a change of subject ready. You can also ask trusted friends not to discuss the matter with anybody new, and to minimize your current financial problems if anyone else raises the topic.

I do think you should say something to Dr. Bountiful, unless you believe that bringing the matter up at all, ever, will make it harder for you to get affordable treatment.

One reason you should talk to him is that he may not even know what’s going on. The leak may have come from somebody who actually had an acceptable reason to know about the situation—his partner, his business manager, or the person who handles the billing—and Dr. Bountiful may be both blameless and ignorant. Or he may be less blameless—say, if he blabbed to his hygienist, or told his wife but swore her to secrecy—but still ignorant that the information went any further. In either case, you will be doing him and your fellow patients a service if you tell him how far the story has travelled. He may even be grateful, although I would not hold my breath.

But the main reason to tell him, of course, is to get him to stop—with you and with any other recipients of his generosity. He needs to know that your privacy and dignity matter.

If you have any reason to believe that he or those around him are still talking about the matter, it would make sense to get in touch with him now. If not, you can take your time to contact him, even wait until your next visit so you can speak to him in person, and perhaps less formally. (I prefer letters, but tastes and talents differ.)

Unless you know, and you know he knows you know (etc.), that he is the source of the gossip, I would talk or write to Dr. Bountiful as if he has no idea what happened. Here are some talking points, in letter form.

Dear Dr. Bountiful,  

First, thank you so much for your generosity and skill. I will always be grateful for it.

I wanted to alert you that someone in your office somehow let it out that you put in a crown for me at very low cost because my family is in financial trouble. (I know this because a neighbor mentioned it to me.) Needless to say, my husband and I are trying to get back on our feet and do not want the details of our situation generally known. Like most people, we value our privacy and our reputations very highly. 

I am less concerned that one of my neighbors somehow found out about my crown—but I can’t see why my personal health information [that’s the technical term, which it’s good to let him know you’ve seen] is their business!

I am hoping that you can speak to your staff about this. I’m sure you understand how important privacy can be, especially in hard times. 

Thanks again for making it possible for me to get the crown, and for your great work. The crown looks good and seems to fit just fine.  

Please give my warmest regards to Mrs. Bountiful. Hope Little Bountiful aced the regionals. 

Yours, etc.

If you decide to speak to him in person, I’d take the same basic tack, but probably be a bit more effusive in your thanks, and detailed in your concern.

By the way, are you quite sure you want to continue going to this dentist? Are there more affordable options, at least for routine work? Is there a nearby dental school with a clinic? You say that Dr. Bountiful is “really nice,” but when you write about not antagonizing him, and needing him to keep being nice to you, he sounds more like the godfather, or the proprietor of the company store.

If you do feel that his office is the only choice for you, I hope that he is indeed a “really nice” person, and not the sort to take offense at hearing the valid concerns of a patient who happens to be in straitened circumstances. If he is a good person, a few words from you should ensure that he and his staffers do not “sound a trumpet before them as the hypocrites do,” whether for “glory among men” or gossip among neighbors.

Dear June, 

Yesterday night my husband and I got into a big fight. This morning I found an enormous, perfectly ripe avocado in our crisper and instead of saving half of it for him, as I usually do when we have a finite amount of fruits and veggies, I ate the whole thing myself. Was I wrong? 

—Remorseful in Reading

Dear ReRe,

Depending on how much other good food there was in the house, and how much your husband is known to like avocados, you were either not very wrong or not wrong at all. On the whole, it sounds as if you are doing just fine morally. In fact, if this is the sort of thing that fills you with genuine remorse, you are probably some kind of saint.

I suspect that, for you, the avocado in question is not just any old veggie-like single-seeded berry, but a symbol of one or more problems in your marriage. Try to bear in mind that, unless you come to blows or somebody gets verbally abusive, marital disagreements are normal and can even be healthy. But if you really are worried about how things are going between you and your partner, it never—well, hardly ever—hurts to talk the matter over with your spouse or, if you believe or know this will not work, with a professional.

How about going out and buying some more luscious avocados? You can give your husband enough to assuage all lingering avocado-based guilt, and still have plenty of avocado flesh left over for guacamole or trendy toast.

By the way, be sure never to cut an avocado in anger. You could hurt yourself. For reasons I fail to understand given the state of our democracy, the polar ice cap, and the Doomsday Clock, avocado-cutting safety seems to be a hot topic on the Internet these days. There are some great YouTube videos about the best way to cut and peel avocados. If you are not a master avocado cutter already, check one out. You may save your fingers, and you’ll learn about this fun thing to do with the edge of your knife.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

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Dear June,

The other day I called a local politician’s office to talk about an event they were hosting to sign people up for a senior discount program. The staffer who answered the phone chatted with me for a minute or two about one of the politician’s favorite causes, which I also support. Things were going fine until I mentioned that I was calling about the senior sign-up. “For a loved one?” she asked. As soon as I said “No, for me,” her tone changed completely—she switched into this saccharine, singsong, much louder voice and started talking way, way down to me. She asked me if I knew what photo I.D. was and, when I said I did, asked me if I thought a credit card was photo I.D. Before I managed to end the call she had reminded me twice to bring the I.D., and asked me if I had remembered to write down the address she had given me.

When I got to the office I realized that, although I have been over sixty for a few years now, this was the first time I had ever participated in a seniors-only activity. It made me remember why I ran away from pre-school when I was four. The three women who were running the show kept condescending to us and trying to help us do things we were obviously capable of doing, like finding the pens sitting on top of the applications they had laid out for us. What annoyed me the most is that they kept calling us “Young Lady,” or “Young Man,” until finally I said to one of them that there was no shame in being old. She just beamed at me even more relentlessly and said, “Oh, but I bet you are young at heart.” Then I caught her giving a colleague one of those “Isn’t she feisty?” looks.

Am I right to be annoyed by this?  And how do I combat it?

—Slighted in St. Louis

Dear St. Louis,

There should be some age-based equivalent to the term “mansplaining.” I was thinking maybe “youngsplaining,” except that it sounds clunky and, anyway, many of the explainers are no spring chickens themselves. (“Oldsplaining?” “Agesplaining?” Can I get some help here? ) I have never been able to understand why so many people, even those who know how to make all the right noises where minorities and women are concerned, assume that the elderly cannot understand or cope with much of anything solely because of their age.

I completely understand why you are annoyed by the stereotyping and apparent condescension of the woman on the phone, and the pen-locating helpers at the office. The right to be taken seriously and the right not to be pigeonholed should be basic social guarantees.  I am against infantilizing any entire class of people, with the possible exception of infants. Some older people, and many children, feel hurt or insulted by being talked down to, which is of course bad. Others buy into it and start learning helplessness and self-doubt, which may be worse.

Still, it is not always easy to tell when to speak up against this patronizing ageism, when to combat it by less direct means, and when to just lighten up and let it go.

In the case you describe, one good response would have been to keep things pleasant while demonstrating your non-idiocy in some way—for example, by telling the woman on the phone who asked you about the address that you’d already entered it in your contacts and pinged it. Or by saying, “No need. It’s 7468 West Maple, Suite 25 B, zip code 12345, right?” I am not saying that you, or anybody, should be expected to have a calm, well-thought-out response ready every time you are surprised by rude or thoughtless conduct. But it is wise to remember that keeping things pleasant, at least until you’ve got your emotions under control, is usually the kindest and most effective way to go. Remember, too that—as writing teachers are always saying—you should show, not tell. Show people like the caller that you still have at least as many marbles as you did in 1985. Then, if you think about it and still want to tell them why you are annoyed, and why they might want to take a few extra seconds to draw out older people before making assumptions, you can do this at a later, quieter time.

Of course, if the oldsplainers (seniorsplainers? eldersplainers?) in question are being outright offensive, especially if they are condescending to several people and seem likely to make this a habit, it may be time to speak up. The situation in your local pol’s office may have risen to that level. If you think it would help, you could call or write the pol to thank him for the sign-up session, but add a suggestion that some of his helpful staffers were a bit too helpful. Tell him that you would hate it if simple misunderstandings like this ended up defeating the purpose of his great senior outreach efforts. Add a few details about what happened. If you are feeling expansive, remind him that RBG has been eligible for senior discounts for about twenty years now, and that older people vote in larger numbers than any other group.

You have also come to the right place about “young lady/man” and “you’re young at heart.” Both expressions can be infuriating.

That said, I suspect both of us of some oversensitivity here. In many subcultures and locales—among them parts of the South, the African-American community in my city, and my parents’ friends—using the term “young lady/man” for people of all ages is such a reflex that it is hard to take any real offense when someone says it. (Parents and teachers who say “young lady” in anger, as in “Watch your language, young lady,” present a totally different set of issues that, thankfully, need not concern us here.) It’s still fair to call people on it if it really

bothers you, but I suggest doing so gently, maybe jokingly. “I haven’ t been young since 1975, thank God.”  Or: “Thanks, but I’m happy with reality.”

The whole “young at heart” issue seems to me more complex. On the on hand, it refers to an attitude, not a chronological age, so it is not as if anyone is unconsciously insulting who you are by pretending you’re something you’re obviously and measurably not. On the other hand, why are old people who do not conform to norms or stereotypes for oldness “young at heart”?  I am reminded of times when, as a young student and lawyer, I was complimented for thinking like a man, when obviously if I, a woman, had done the thinking, I had been thinking like at least one woman.

I have more to say about patronizing and ageism, but this column is already late. Luckily, I have another letter from a vexed older writer who does not want to be “adorable.” So expect more theorizing soon.

I hope you get some massive discounts. You deserve them.

Dear June,

My neighbor keeps telling people that he just got back from “one of the islands.”  He was in the Dominican Republic. Why doesn’t he just say that?

I am trying to love my neighbor.

Thanks,
Mildly Vexed in Mount Vernon

Dear MV,

Your guess is as good as mine. Since you asked, though, I will hazard a few. Maybe he thinks saying “one of the islands” makes him sound sophisticated—you know, an island-hopper. Maybe he thinks the Dominican Republic, technically half of Hispanolia (which it shares with Haiti), is less impressive or desirable than one or more unspecified other islands, although I cannot imagine why. Maybe, on the other hand, he thinks a Dominican Republic vacation is so much cooler and than going to just about any unspecified other island, and does not want to brag, or to make his neighbors envious and unhappy. Maybe he is incredibly thoughtful, but does not have a very high opinion of your neighbors’ knowledge of geography, and is afraid that, if he tells them he went to the Dominican Republic, their responses will reveal that they think the D.R. is country in South America, or a state in the Southwest somewhere, or a clothing store in the Mall of America—causing them embarrassment.

Maybe he is a baseball scout for the Yankees and does not want the Red Sox to find out where he’s looking. Or maybe he is just a weird private person, perhaps even a bit of a jerk in that indefinable way that some jerks are jerks.

Whatever motivates your neighbor, it is time for both of us to stop guessing. I assume that you and he and the other neighbors will soon move on to other topics. Your problem, in addition to being about as minor as a problem can be, is self-limiting.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Image credit: Allen McGregor on Flickr

Dear June,

In most ways I am a good mother, wife, and friend, but I realize that I am a bit critical and nitpicky. Even when I make an effort not to, I find myself suggesting that my (adult) daughter’s hair needs combing, or that my husband should stop starting every sentence with “So,” or that my weight-loss buddy should do more lifting and less swimming if she wants to see results. I really am working on keeping my mouth shut. But I fail often. How can I stop myself from giving so much advice?

—Critical in Carolina

Dear C in C,

Funny question to ask an advice columnist! And, indeed, I may be the wrong person to ask because I have been told that I share your problem. But, then again, I may be just the right person if you want the empathy that comes from having walked down that same carping, officious, insufficiently-filtered road.

Let me tell you a story. I used to have an ungainly wolfish dog, whom I’ll call Peaches (although God knows why I am changing her name). Peaches had many issues, one of which was what her trainer, who had a flair for euphemism, called an underdeveloped bite-inhibition reflex. The dog did get better, but she backslid sometimes; and I remember how, on one such occasion, she lunged at my chin. I could see her look of total dismay as, mid-lunge, she remembered all the reasons she really did not want to bite me any more. My laugh as I saw that unmistakable “Oh, shit, now I’ve done it!” expression in her demented blue eyes is probably what saved us both: I doubled over and her jaw clamped shut as the bottom of her snout landed lightly on the top of my head. Peaches slunk off into the back yard and never bit me, or at least hardly ever broke the skin, again.

I have thought of that poor dog and her “Oh, shit!” face more than once while standing by helplessly, listening to myself blurt out some ill-advised suggestion or opinion. (One of my favorites: “But isn’t that more a name for a house pet than a kid?”) And, like her, I have gotten better, but I backslide. Please take the following not as some lofty expert’s gospel but as tentative, but experienced-based, suggestions from a fellow sufferer, as if I were standing before you at your local chapter of Advice-givers Anonymous.

I find that the best way to strengthen the advice-inhibition reflex is through advance planning and dry runs. What are your areas of danger? Perhaps your daughter is coming home for a visit. Visualize her with the most unkempt hair imaginable. Then put clashing orange and fuchsia streaks in it. Then practice not mentioning it. Run through scenarios where you talk to her about any number of matters unrelated to hair, or indeed to appearance. Practice how to respond if she has a fit of daughterly insecurity or wickedness and actually asks for your opinion on her hair, or her clothes, or her piercings, or her tattoos, or whatever else might get to you. Think of how happy you will be to see her. Think of the things you most love about her.

Do the same when you are about to see problematic friends or colleagues, or when you have reason to suspect that your husband is about to launch into a speech full of serial “So”s. Visualize your silence. Visualize appreciating, or at least paying attention to, the content of what your husband is saying. As for your friends, think about recent events in their lives and imagine scenarios where, when you get together, you lead with some thoughtful questions about these events and stay far away from any comments on those unfortunate dad jeans Robert is wearing or those pesky typos in that poem Lydia finally got published.

Tell yourself that almost everybody likes to be listened to, and that almost nobody likes unsolicited advice. You probably know this quite well already, or you would not have written. But keep reminding yourself. And remind yourself further that talking about a problem is not the same thing as soliciting advice. Hell, half the people I know don’t really want advice even when they come out and ask for it. I just hope that the people who write me are in a separate category.

Another tactic I have found useful, although not quite as effective as visualizing specific scenarios, is more general exercises and pep talks. Say: “I will be careful! I will hold my tongue!” And find some inhibiting behavior you think will work for you. Counting to ten—or to five, given our sped-up world—can be useful. But it really does take practice. If people could always remember to stop and count to ten before blurting out unwanted advice and opinions, they could probably always remember not to blurt them out in the first place. You have to make a habit of tricks like counting to ten, or looking at the floor, or pinching yourself. (You also have to know when to break the habit: there are business situations where rapid-fire exchanges, or just getting a word in edgewise, are more important than caution.)

Bear in mind that, where advice and opinions are concerned, it rarely matters how witty and pithy they are, or even whether the advice is sound or the opinions correct. The real issue is most often interpersonal. Are we showing respect? Are we treating people as equals? Are we observing the proper boundaries? Are we helping people maintain their sense of self-worth, including any harmless illusions they may have? Or are we sacrificing any of these in order to establish our own importance or display our own cleverness and expertise?

This is also important: never forget that there are countless implicit, even involuntary ways to convey one’s opinion. Families and close friends can be geniuses at discerning feelings you think, or would like to think, you have managed not to express. You therefore have to be very careful what you say when certain thoughts are uppermost in your mind. If you are thinking about the ineffectiveness of your weight-loss buddy’s swimming routine, this is a good time to say nothing about swimming, or weights, or anything remotely related to either. If your friend knows you well, even a remark like “I think I will only swim ten laps today!” or “I’m so pleased with my progress on the rotary torso machine!” will very likely sound to her like what you are thinking. She will hear what you probably mean—“Stop swimming so much and get into the weight room if you want to get rid of those bingo arms”— and she may be more annoyed than if you had just come out and said it.

You even have to be careful about totally nonverbal cues. If you really want to cut back on the unsolicited advice and opinions, work on your poker face. Just last week I got in big trouble with my family because of what they call The Look, which I apparently deployed after hearing something that bothered me for about three seconds, and then not even very much. I am currently doing some soul-searching about whether there are times when I actually know I am engaging in The Look and am being passive–aggressive or something, or whether I honesty never have any idea what’s going on with my facial expressions.

As for The Silence, don’t even get me started.

I suppose that the only safe way to avoid conveying unwanted opinions is to arrive at a state between neutral and enchanted about every aspect of everyone you know. In the meantime, though, you and I will have to work on our visualizations and do our advice-inhibiting calisthenics.

Peaches died young, of natural causes. Even though it was probably for the best, I still miss her. She really tried, which is all anybody can do.

Dear June,

This weird little thing happened to me the other night. I was on my third date with “Steven,” whom I met on line but who turns out to know a couple of people I went to college with. Our first date was just Starbucks. The next time we walked and talked for a couple hours. The third and most recent time we went out for dinner and a movie. We were getting along very well and I invited him up for coffee. Anyway, we talked and laughed, I showed him some old pictures, and we made out a little.

I got up to go to the bathroom and he went into the kitchen, I assumed for a coffee refill. But on my way back I saw him looking into my spice cabinet. Then he took out my bottle of rosemary and put it in his pocket.

I backed away, really glad that there was music playing to cover my retreat. There was plenty of time to fake a second entrance after Steven had closed the cabinet and returned to the couch. After a few minutes more I told him I was tired and wanted to call it a night. He looked disappointed but was very kind and pleasant, saying what a great time he’d had, kissing me goodbye, and telling me he would keep in touch.

After he left I checked, and the bottle was gone. Isn’t that strange? It was just a regular bottle of the Acme house brand, maybe an ounce.  

He left me a voicemail yesterday asking when we should get together again. 

How weird is that? And what should I do? I was starting to like Steven, but this seems kind of creepy. 

—Weirded Out in West Orange

Dear Wo,

It seems kind of creepy to me, too. And definitely weird. If he had just taken a pocket pack of Kleenex, or maybe a candy bar, you could reasonably decide that he is a bit thoughtless and rude, but not (depending on the nature and extent of the candy bar in question) necessarily undatable. If he had lifted a pair of gold earrings, you would conclude that he was a thief, stop seeing him, and possibly inform the police. But pocketing one of your spices? This, too, probably makes him undatable, since it points to some kind of abnormality—a compulsion, maybe, or a fetish, or a basic lack of understanding or respect for other people.

You are still at the very start of the dating process. I would advise you to get out now. Best, I think, would be to call things off over the phone. A phone call is kinder (and less permanent!) than a text or email; but safer and easier to terminate, and less of a big deal, than an in-person meeting. If the thought of a live conversation is too unpleasant, go ahead and text. And if, for some reason, you want to talk to him in person, be sure to do so in a neutral public place.

Do you feel the need to ask him about the rosemary? I was going to advise you to avoid an unnecessary argument by just letting Steven’s petty theft go, and making the same “you’re wonderful, but this just isn’t working” speech you would have made if he had never pocketed the rosemary. But then a few things occurred to me. One: Although you don’t have a clear duty to do so, it would be kind to let this guy know that what he did is troubling, not to mention really off-putting, and that he should get help. Two: If you are like me, you will spend more time than it’s worth wondering about it if you never ask for an explanation. Three: It is conceivable, although highly unlikely , that he may actually have an explanation. The only acceptable one I can think of is that there was some misunderstanding. Maybe you will you ask him why he took your rosemary and he will say, in total and credible surprise, that when he heard you coming into the room the first time he called out to you to ask if he could borrow some for a pork roast and was sure you heard him and said yes, but that must have just been the Nina Simone he heard—the music was loud and his back was turned. I just might believe that. But I doubt that he will say any such thing. It is much more likely that he will deny that he took the rosemary (dump him!). Or he may say that he was going to ask if he could borrow it and simply forgot to tell you and is SOOOOOO embarrassed (I do not believe that: unless you know more than I do, dump him!). Or he may confess that he has some sort of problem like kleptomania, or the need to take some small trophy object from a romantic prospect, and is making significant progress in therapy (listen sympathetically, but dump him nevertheless).

Take my sage advice and be very careful.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

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Dear June,

I am a senior in high school and have been dating the same boy, Allston (fake name! duh!) for over three years. We first told each other we loved each other when we were just starting tenth grade and we promised to be faithful to each other. We started having sex when we were fifteen. There were even some pregnancy scares before I started being more careful. We have been through a lot together. 

The problem is that I just got into my dream school, with great financial aid. Allston was accepted at some good colleges, but none of them are within 500 miles of my dream school. The other problem is that I am not even sure I want to stay with Allston. I still love him, I guess, but there are lots of days when I would just as soon not see him. I get bored and then I feel guilty.  

What should I do? The world seems like such a mean dishonest place. Most men treat women like pieces of meat. And here I am with a kind, smart, respectful boy I know I can trust, and part of me just wants to leave him and break all my promises and go off to Massachusetts. There are two schools we both got into that would give me a decent education. But part of me thinks that even if I went to the same school as Allston I might want to date somebody else. I already sometimes do want to, actually. But isn’t life supposed to involve making sacrifices for a larger good?  

—Indecisive in Indianapolis

Dear Indy,

You should go to your dream school.

I would advise this even if you had not mentioned any reservations about your feelings for Allston. It sounds as if you two have had a loving and meaningful relationship, but you are still very young. In our society, at least, you are barely into your adolescence, with many years ahead for learning and exploration. There is every reason not to limit your educational or personal choices at this point. This is important for all young people, but especially for young women who, all too often, have been culturally conditioned to choose romance, safety, and the wishes of others over challenge and opportunity. The chance to go to the college of your dreams may be one of the greatest opportunities life offers you. Take it.

Besides, you do have some serious reservations about Allston. You “guess” you love him, but you admit that you get bored sometimes, think about dating other people, and welcome time alone more than you used to. These are all good reasons for considering a breakup even without the college-choice issue. Putting a few hundred miles between you may be just what you both need so that you can move on.

It would be shortsighted tin the extreme to opt for a school you find merely “decent” in hopes of preserving a relationship you are already starting to find unsatisfactory. You would very likely end up being not just unhappy with Allston but also disappointed by Decent U and understandably resentful at having sacrificed your dream.

You mention two overarching reasons for staying with Allston. One is that he is a good, respectful, intelligent man in a world where men like that are hard to come by. This may be true, and you should certainly be careful where you give your heart, to say nothing of how closely you watch your drink glasses at bars and parties, in the years ahead. Even so, most of us have managed to go out there and find a pool of good guys from which to choose and be chosen at various points in our lives. Besides, if you are already limiting your educational choices, and trying to talk yourself into staying in a relationship that no longer seems to fulfill you, because of some fear that you will never find a good man again, the jerks have already won. I would also just throw out there that you probably had excellent reasons for shooting for your dream school—perhaps you were dreaming that going there would satisfy your intellectual curiosity, prepare you for your chosen career or guide you in choosing one, introduce you to all kinds of new people, and help you become independent and self-confident. These are the goals you should keep in mind when making your college choice—and, as a collateral benefit, they will make you a stronger, savvier, more independent woman who will know how to recognize the good men and fend off the bad ones.

But what about duty, the second reason you gave for staying with Allston and giving up Dream U? Yes, there certainly are promises we should keep and relationships we should preserve even when times are hard or, often worse, boring. And there are certainly duties that should win out over our strong preferences, even college or career preferences. I understand your concern about being faithful to Allston, and you sound like a lovely young woman for caring about his feelings, honoring your long (for high school) relationship, and wanting to keep your word.

I do not think, though—and I doubt that anybody else, with the possible exception of Allston and perhaps a few of your more overwrought friends, would think—that your promises and duties to Allston are anywhere near this level. You were, and are, simply too young and inexperienced to be bound either by the vows you made or the time you’ve spent dating.

If it had so happened that you still found Allston endlessly fascinating and fulfilling, things might be different. But you do not, and that is fine. In fact, it may be better. This is your time to experiment and grow. If you look around you, you will see how few people end up building a life with their first love. Most people will tell you that they are very glad they moved on and eventually settled on someone better suited to them (or on a happy single life), and equally glad that they had some variety and fun along the way.

While we are still on the topic of duty, you should think about what you do owe Allston: honesty. Your boredom and restlessness do not sound like temporary blips on your romantic radar while you are stressed about deciding which college to choose. They sound like the way a person feels when she is falling out of love. You will not be doing Allston any favors if you stay with him, and even follow him to college, out of a sense of “sacrificing for some greater good.” No healthy eighteen-year-old man wants to be an object of duty whose girlfriend sees not just giving up on her first-choice college, but also dating him exclusively, as sacrifices. He will pick up on this, if he hasn’t started to already.

Talk to Allston. Tell him you plan to go to Dream U, and that you think your choice makes this a good time to talk about your relationship. The two of you may want to hold on to some part of it for now—go to Prom together, maybe, or date exclusively until you both leave for college, then see how it goes after that. Or one or both of you may prefer a clean break. Whatever happens, I suspect that you will not be together this time next year (except as loving exes, if you are lucky).

Who knows what the future, even the distant future, may bring? You may transfer to Decent U two years from now after falling back in love, although I very much doubt it. Or you may get back together with Allston after trading photos of the grandkids at the Nobel awards in 2057. Or not. In the meantime, I hope you have a fantastic, guilt-free college experience, with plenty of loving but even more learning. Go Dream U!

Dear June,

I am a faculty member at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. I have a student I’ll call Joe, who has taken several classes with me, and has asked me for letters of recommendation many times. Each time I have written him a positive letter. He is not one of the best students I’ve ever had, but he is a good writer and has other strengths that I have emphasized in the letters.

But last week he did something that took me by surprise. My class had an assignment that involved teaching a short lesson on a topic they are researching for their final project to students who live in a nearby underserved public school. This assignment was clearly on the syllabus from day 1, although it is not weighted heavily towards the final grade. Almost everyone in the class was excited about the project and put a lot of effort into it. But Joe did almost no preparation. When he showed me what he was planning to present, I realized he needed help and asked a more advanced student to assist him. He did not accept the help but instead told her that he resented the assignment, which he thought of as “working for free.” The more advanced student ended up taking over and doing almost the entire presentation herself. At the end of the presentation, I asked Joe in private why he had not done more of the teaching. He basically repeated what he had told my advanced student, saying that he had come to college to learn, not to be an unpaid instructor for someone else’s students. 

Today he emailed to ask me for another letter of recommendation, this time for a civic-minded internship that involves working in the city. He did not address the incident in class, but simply said, “Since you’ve written for me before, I think you would be able to write me a good recommendation.” 

I have not yet responded. I thought about declining and explaining why. But if I do that he will surely give me negative course evaluations. I am untenured, and course evaluations are weighted heavily at my college. 

What should I do?

 —Undecided in an Undisclosed Location

Dear U in a U,

I am appalled by your student’s behavior. You had made this requirement clear on the syllabus: his unilateral decision to virtually ignore it, for his own openly selfish reason, shows a total disregard for your authority and pedagogical methods. (Perhaps it has never occurred to the little snot that teaching, even teaching “underserved” kids, can be a learning experience, even for overserved kids.)

His conduct—or, at least, his assuming that he could get away with it—is also unfair to his fellow students, who did pitch in for that “unpaid work,” and especially to the advanced student who did his assignment for him.

Worst of all is his ungenerous, disrespectful attitude toward the students he was supposed to teach. He seems to have a healthy ego, so I assume he believed that a carefully-prepared lesson from him would have been of some value to them. But apparently he cared more about his own precious time than their well-being.

Course-evaluations and their repercussions aside, I believe that you should teach this kid a lesson, in both the kind and the not-so-kind senses of the term. Unless there has been some gross misunderstanding, Joe has plenty to learn about humility, community, and respect for others. No decent liberal arts college should let him graduate from it without at least trying to get through to him before unleashing him on the world. So yes, you should try to explain to him why his conduct was unacceptable and why he might, therefore, want to seek a recommendation elsewhere. It’s conceivable that he might have some explanation for his behavior that would make it more understandable, although I am hard pressed to come up with one. (Covering for scars and performance anxiety because of childhood bullying? Covering for being unprepared because of some recent family tragedy? Bizarre expression of solidarity with striking TAs?) Nor would I lay a heavy bet on his having some basic change of heart as a result of your explanations, or your declining to recommend him. But perhaps you could nudge his heart a little in the right direction, or at least let him know that—in some circles, anyway—entitled, selfish defiance can actually have consequences.

If I were you—and, again, course-evaluation and tenure issues aside—and if it is not already too late, I would also make sure that his grade reflects his handling of the teaching requirement, and explain why. I would certainly give him a very low grade for that one assignment; and if your school rules permit it I would lower his grade further for the separate offense of explicitly refusing to do assigned work on the syllabus, to the detriment of the class as a whole and the community. This seems to me a separate category from simply doing poor work, less serious but similar in some ways to plagiarism: if somebody brazenly and knowingly plagiarizes an assignment that only counts for 10% of the grade, this usually doesn’t—and certainly shouldn’t—mean that the grade simply gets lowered by 10%.

But you are worried about those course evaluations. Not having to survive in the meat-grinder of Academe myself, I do not want to pass judgment. I will say, though, that this strikes me as a very clear case, one where you should take a stand if you are ever going to: Joe flouted your authority, ignored the requirements of the syllabus, and behaved selfishly and without any sense of civic responsibility. Yet you have not even asked me about his grade, but only whether you should actually recommend him—not one of your best students in any case—for a “civic-minded” internship in the city when has already shown indifference, at best, to the type of community I assume he is being asked to serve.

I have to ask you: if course evaluations are so important to your institution, does anybody there ever give mediocre grades, or refuse to write a recommendation? Don’t the senior faculty and administration have any sense of how disgruntled students tend to react? And don’t they know how to discount outlier evaluations? Is there nobody you can talk to about the situation, for protection if not real guidance? But perhaps I am missing the point here by naively assuming that anyone in your department will care whether your course evaluations are fair and accurate, as opposed to whether they are likely to draw more applications and donations to your institution.

If you decide that it is just not worth the risk of antagonizing Joe by assessing him honestly and telling him why, this certainly does not speak well for your college. Again, I reserve judgment on how it reflects on you. Depending on circumstances I don’t know anything about, you may quite reasonably feel that you will be not only safer, but also more able to do good, by avoiding a confrontation here. I realize that I am dodging the specific question you asked me; but I hesitate to take a hard stance if there is a real risk that listening to me might jeopardize your job. I suspect that, in your place, I would decline Joe’s request and talk to him about it; but, then again, I am a tenured agony aunt and can say whatever I want with few if any repercussions.

If you do go ahead and write the recommendation, you will have to consider what to put in it. I wonder to what extent your agreeing to write a recommendation implies that you will write a glowing recommendation. I have found that, except in cases where recommendations from a particular person are mandatory (school guidance counselors, thesis advisors, direct supervisors), it is misleading to agree to serve as a reference or write a letter of recommendation for someone you do not, in fact, plan to recommend. But what about damning with faint praise? Given everything you have told me, I do not see any ethical problem with writing a recommendation that, while honest about Joe’s strengths, is less enthusiastic than your previous ones. In fact, I kind of hope you do. The city where he’s applying deserves no less. Besides, taking time out of your busy schedule, just so you can bend over backwards trying to make this kid look good, sounds like unpaid work to me.

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Image credit: Juan Ramos on Unsplash

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Dear June,

I dated Todd for almost three years. During that time nobody (except my family, who lives far away and hardly knows him) ever criticized him in any way. This includes my closest friends, many of whom saw Todd often and knew him well. But since Todd and I broke up, many of my friends have come out and told me that they never could stand him and hated the way he treated me. And, of the friends who didn’t volunteer this information, every single one I’ve asked has given basically the same answer. Now that I know I can never trust anyone, I feel more alone than ever. What do you think of “friends” like this? And what should I do about them?

—Lied To in La Jolla

Dear LT in LJ,

I am concerned by your friends’ references to the way Todd treated you. Did they have reason to suspect that he was physically or psychologically abusive? If so, shame on them for not stepping in. I would put as much distance between them and you as your current circumstances allow, and I would take steps to replace these friends with a whole new set.

But if your friends’ basic problem was that they just didn’t like Todd, I suggest that you go easy on them. They may have thought his treatment of you was less than ideal, but assumed that you were fully aware of this and still got enough out of the relationship to want to stay in it.

You should also ask yourself whether some of what your friends have been saying post-breakup is more a way of supporting, and perhaps parroting back, your current opinions than a totally accurate expression of how they felt the whole time you and Todd were still together. At this point they may just be trying to be loyal and agreeable—especially if you are always the one who initiates the badmouthing, and they just go along with it

There are reasons why people are understandably reluctant to criticize their friends’ significant others. One is that doing so is often futile—and, indeed, tends to backfire. Your friends may have thought, rightly or wrongly, that anything bad they said about Todd would only make you angry at them, and that you might just get defensive and dig yourself in deeper. You may have led them to believe that you would brook no criticism of Todd; but, even if you didn’t, your friends might have been afraid of such a response, given how common it is.

Another reason people keep silent in this situation is that they assume their friend knows what she’s doing, as in: “I don’t see it, but there must be something in it for her or she’d dump him.” Were you happy with Todd, and did you convey that impression? Did you talk him up?

Were you and Todd starting to speak and behave like committed partners? This is another reason your friends may have kept silent; even if they honestly disliked Todd as much, and for as long, as they now claim, they may not have thought it morally right to interfere with another couple’s solid relationship.

I would also think about whether your friends have ever given you grounds to mistrust them beyond this one case. Where friendship is concerned, disparaging other people’s partners really is an area unto itself in which even the closest of confidants probably shouldn’t expect full disclosure. It is good—well, it’s arguably good—for social stability that we honor other people’s primary commitments (again, absent abuse or other serious turpitude). For that reason—and, of course, because it’s so often pointless or counterproductive—many of us assume that seriously disparaging people’s partners, even close friends’ partners, is simply not done. If your friends subscribe to this fairly common and not-unreasonable view of things, you should not think of them as having betrayed our trust, since they were following an unwritten rule they thought you also followed and understood.

Of course, this unwritten rule would not excuse them if they went out of their way to praise Todd without meaning a word of it. It is one thing to keep your own counsel, and another to actively collude in a friend’s self-delusion.

I would also be seriously, and probably permanently, annoyed at any so-called friends who thought Todd was seriously bad news but nevertheless egged you on, or even kept silent, when you were just starting to date him.

Weigh these factors, ask yourself these questions, and decide which friends you will trust, exonerate, forgive, keep, or chuck. If you are on the fence about any of them, you might try actually talking to them about their U-turn on Todd. It could all turn out to be very simple. You: If you thought he was a bastard all along, why didn’t you tell me? Friend One: Would you have listened? Friend Two: You seemed so happy. I didn’t think it was my place to ruin it. Friend Three: I didn’t trust my judgment then, but I am glad we agree now. Friend Four: I never actually had much of an opinion about Todd one way of the other. You talked, and I listened. Let’s get more margaritas–this pitcher’s almost empty.

Dear June,

 You know what makes me mad? People who say “diminishment.” What’s wrong with good old “diminution?” And now I am seeing “abolishment,” too, for God’s sake. What is the matter with people?

I know this seems like a small thing. Okay, it is a small thing. But language can make a big difference: look at that dairy farm that would have saved $10 million dollars if they had used the Oxford comma!

—Cranky (or Crank?) in Christchurch

Dear Crank,

I, too, dislike those “ment” variations, although probably not at your level, which seems to verge on apoplexy. Nevertheless, I feel constrained to begin my answer with an admonition or, as some people are starting to say, an admonishment. Unless people are consciously using language to lie, mislead, or create confusion– a large subset of humanity, I admit, including entire political parties—we should try to focus on the language, not malign the speakers. As the Bible (sort of) tells us in reference to a somewhat broader category of behavior, we must hate the usage but love the user.

Now on to the usage. I totally agree: “diminishment,” “abolishment,” and the like are unnecessary variants of more sonorous and generally accepted words that refer to exactly the same things. No rationale for them springs to mind, except perhaps the idea that uniform rules of noun-formation make it easier to learn and understand a language. And apparently “diminishment” is a variant that has been around for centuries. (My spell-check is also fine with it.) But I have only seen it once or twice; at this point, I would argue that people learning or improving their English would be better served by not having to learn multiple forms of the same word.

And where will it end? This time next month people may be asking when Trump’s plans for the Mexican wall will come to fruitment while debating the theory of evolvement, and priests may ask their penitents to seek perfect contritement.

Hideous, yes. But not all that serious, even as compared to other matters of vocabulary and usage–nothing like the Oxford comma debate, which you raised as an analogy.

I am passionately pro-Oxford-comma, for many reasons. As with most comma-debating peeps, my most basic reasons are probably not reasons at all, but matters of personality and association. (I had fun in Oxford during my youth, and I love commas in general because I favor pauses and subordinate clauses and marking up other people’s work.) But there are also real reasons. As in the recent Maine case you mention, the Oxford comma can be crucial to avoid legal ambiguity. (The Maine worker’s lawyer said “that comma would have sunk our ship” and lost his clients their shot at $10 million.) We also need the O. c. for clarity in general conversation. (The Grammarly site’s perfect example is “I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty-Dumpty.”)

Even poetry can be tarnished. Consider this line: “These woods are lovely, dark and deep,” in Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Put a comma after “dark,” as some editors reportedly once erroneously did, and the emphasis and resonance of the line changes significantly. Without a general rule on using the Oxford comma whenever there is a list, as opposed to simply using it when one’s writing would otherwise be ambiguous, there is no way to make a point by NOT using it, as Frost does when he is refers to the loveliness of the dark, deep woods and not to the loveliness, darkness, and deepness of the woods. Since the woods may represent, among other things, death, the poetic stakes are high here.

Wow. I guess I really am passionate about that one. And perhaps you and I are just cranks, or cranky, about different nitpicky issues. But I do think that, unlike messing with the Oxford comma, using the “ment” forms in question is a venial sin at worst. And that is because we still know what the words mean. In fact, if we are really bad at noun-formation and haven’t read much, we may understand a word like “diminishment” better than “diminution,” since it sounds more like its parent verb and follows a far more common formation rule.

If we want to maintain the health of words like “diminution” and “abolition,” the best thing, maybe the only thing, we can do is keep using them. But even in the unlikely event that they did die off, we would lose only a variant of each word, not the word itself and not our conception of its referent. There would be no diminution in our ability to abolish stuff, nor would the loss entail the abolition of our capacity to diminish stuff. We’d all be fine. But without proper comma placement, who knows what might happen?

Cleaver’s in-house advice columnist opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Write to her at [email protected]. Find more columns by June in her attic.

Image credit: “Scholar Sharpening A Quill Pen”, c.1630, Gerrit Dou. On Wikipedia

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