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ASK JUNE: November 2021 Pandemic Purge and the Ungracious Griever

Cleaver Magazine Posted on November 18, 2021 by thwackNovember 18, 2021

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

◊

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on November 18, 2021 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: August 2021 The Case of the Callous Grandpa and the Burden of Old Photos

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 28, 2021 by thwackAugust 28, 2021

Dear June,

A few weeks ago my wife and I were watching Noah, our two-year-old grandson, at our house. He was playing with some pots and pans on the floor of our pantry room, totally absorbed. I stepped out of the room for half a minute to refill my coffee, and the next thing I knew there was a crash and Noah was screaming. Either from Noah’s pulling at it or from sheer bad luck, a set of shelves had separated from the wall, raining down boxes, bags, jars, and cans. Ginny, my wife, came rushing in, back from the bathroom, zipping her pants as she ran. She scooped Noah up and took him to the sink. At least one of those cans or jars must have hit him because he was bleeding pretty heavily from a cut in his scalp. Ginny cuddled Noah and cleaned him up a bit, but when she saw how much he was bleeding she told me to bring the car around to go to the ER.

Since Ginny had the Noah situation under control, I had been spending the few minutes since the mishap taking care of other things, mostly resealing bags, putting jars of mayo and simmer sauce that had come open into the fridge, and so on. When she said we were going to the ER I spent maybe thirty more seconds putting a chicken we had been cooking into a Pyrex bowl and refrigerating it, and finding a gallon Ziploc for the flour, which had opened and was getting all over everything. Ginny had barely gotten Noah fastened into his car seat before I came out and took the wheel.

Everything turned out fine. We hardly even lost any food. But now my wife is mostly not speaking to me. I am perplexed and a little annoyed. What should I do?

Shunned in Short Hills

Dear Shunned,

Let me get this straight. Your wife goes off to the bathroom and leaves you alone with a toddler in a pantry full of all kinds of loose stuff on some sort of poorly-attached shelving, and you decide to leave the room, too, and refill your coffee at that same moment. Then, when the shelving comes off and rains full cans and glass jars onto your grandchild, you leave your wife alone to deal with soothing him, giving him first aid, deciding what to do, and putting him into his car seat. You do not get to the car until after she has brought him out and fastened him in because you are so concerned about cleaning up and saving your chicken and flour. And I can’t help but notice that, although you let me know about the fate of your food, you tell me nothing about Noah. (Stitches? Bruises? X-rays? Concussion?)

What you should do is apologize. Tell your wife that you are really sorry you messed up and didn’t rush to help her and Noah. If you can find even a grain of truth in this idea, you might add that you were so confident in her ability to handle a crisis that it clouded your judgment. Promise her that you will never again leave Noah alone for a minute in an area that is not fully toddler-proof, which means just about everywhere. Swear that you will never leave her in the lurch like that again. Reassure her that Noah’s safety and wellbeing are your highest priorities. Keep all those promises. And get better shelving.

◊

Dear June,

Family photographs are weighing me down. Not only do I have boxes and bulky albums full, I also have boxes of photos from my parents and grandparents. It seems like generation after generation, photos are being passed down but not enjoyed. For some of the real oldies, with ladies in feathered hats and men alongside Model T’s, I don’t even know who the people are!

My daughters were born in the 1990s, so their baby and childhood photos are not digital. Like many parents then, I often took three or four (or five) photos of special moments, hoping that one shot would turn out well when the film was developed. Then I’d select the 2-for-1 print special at Walgreen’s to have extra images to send to family members. I know I’m not alone in this! But as a result, an entire hallway closet is filled with photo boxes, and albums are stashed under a bed in the guest room. Each time I walk by that closet, I think, “What am I going to do with all these photos?” My bigger fear is, “How am I going to face all of these?” It’s hard to look at pictures of my children when they were little. That precious time went by so quickly, and as a younger person, I didn’t realize just how quickly it would go. Sometimes a picture fills me with regret over past choices and struggles.

I want to live in the present and enjoy my life as it is, right now. The photos and albums are heavy and taking up too much space. Packed away in a closet or under a bed, no one can even see or enjoy them, so what’s the point of having saved them (and all the negatives)? They’re also occupying mental space and energy. Yet when I’ve tried to sort and throw some away, it’s been painful. How can I put a picture of my child or a beloved grandmother in the trash? There’s a reason Marie Kondo says to leave photos for last. I’d be grateful for your advice on ways to accomplish this overwhelming task so that I can finally complete it and move on.

Walking Down Too Many Memory Lanes in Mamaroneck

Dear Walking,

I’m in the same boat—maybe even worse off, since I have somehow ended up with not just three generations of my own family’s photos, but also several photo collections from collateral branches. So I could not be more empathetic. And, despite not yet having even tried to deal with the accumulation of photographs in my own house, I do have some recent experience sorting somebody else’s that might prove useful. Earlier this summer my niece and I spent two days and three long evenings in Florida, sorting through fifty years’ worth of photographs from an incapacitated relative (let’s call her Great Aunt Lucy). There were hundreds and hundreds of photographs and negatives in boxes, and more albums than I care to recall. As we went along, we developed some rules and rhythms, and ended up not hating the process, which relied heavily on banter and ice cream sandwiches. We also got fairly good results, winnowing the collection down to two boxes for Lucy herself, who is in assisted living; a few choice photos and albums for other family members and friends; and only two cartons for me and my nuclear family, which was about ten cartons fewer than I thought I would feel obligated to bring home to my already-overloaded shelves and closets.

But we had an advantage over you: our backs were to the wall. The house that had held these photographs was being sold, so we had to do something with them right away. And our choices were not so fraught. Once we had set aside what we thought Lucy would want to keep—a fairly easy process since we both knew her well—fewer than 300 of the remaining photos were unique images of our own parents or children, which I have to admit we found almost impossible to relinquish. As you imply in your letter, facing certain photos can be the worst hurdle, which we solved by giving them cursory glances and then keeping them all.

It sounds as if you really want get started, but are not yet at the back-to-the wall stage—I assume you aren’t expecting any terrifying in-laws to move in and demand all the space under the guest-room bed?

Sound like you need a plan and maybe also a prod. The best way to begin, I think, is by reviewing what you are trying to accomplish, then dividing this undertaking into smaller, more manageable, less emotion-laden tasks.

As for your overall goals: it sounds as if you want to prune your collection while saving the photos and albums that you, your family, and your descendants are likely to find most meaningful and entertaining. You want what’s left to be easier to access. You would like to free up some of that storage space. And you’d like the process to be as painless as possible—dare I say, even to produce some happy moments?—and to leave you with a sense that you have done all you need to do, so that you can move on.

Those goals all seem clear enough. But they do not go far toward resolving the specifics of what to save, and what to let go. Decisions about what’s worth keeping obviously have to be yours, but I can offer some guidelines you might use as you winnow. I am confident that you’ll figure things out as you go along; that, the more deeply you go into the process, the clearer your mind will be about where you want to end up and how you will get there. That has been the case for me, my niece, and everybody I know who has spent a chunk of time sorting through photos and other memorabilia. (Well, there was my cousin Harold, who totally lost it and finally just abandoned all his family photos on a street corner—which is how, thanks to a woman who found me online, I ended up with one of my collateral-branch collections. As it happened, some of the images he jettisoned turned out to be family treasures.)

Now for tactics. Here are some ways to divide your job into smaller jobs:

—by date or era

—by source (who took or collected the photos)

—by subject (which person, place, family, major event)

—by format (size, color vs. black and white, album vs. loose, etc.)

—by order stored (or easiest to reach)

Or you may just want to start with the place in your house you most want cleared out, like that area under the bed.

Try to sort either by era or by source, and start with whichever time or source strikes you as easiest to get through. From your letter, it looks like the “real oldies” would be a smart place to begin, since you do not seem especially attached to those Model T’s and unidentifiable people and so on. If photos or even whole albums have no meaning for you or your kids, by all means dispose of them: throw them out or, if you think they may have value as antique objects or as records of a time and place, give them to a store that sells old photographs or send them to the relevant local historical society or library

And if getting rid of most or all of your “oldies” seems extreme, there are less radical solutions. For example, just taking photos out of albums, especially those enormous old ones, can drastically cut the storage space needed. When we were in Florida my niece and I saved a few old albums: two that were charming and had worn well, one that we thought my brother would like, and one that was so very old it felt like a historical artifact. The other old photos didn’t seem to lose much by not being in albums, and took up so much less space once liberated that we ended up saving far more of the photos themselves than we had originally planned. This spared us considerable regret and time-consuming indecision, since we are both hopelessly sentimental about old things, even pictures of Gibson girls who, for all we know, were just cousins of some in-law or other.

We did toss some of the loose oldies, though, mostly blurry images of unfamiliar places or multiple shots of the same unidentified person. Since my niece and I represent two generations in our family, we decided that if a photograph didn’t move either of us or inspire any curiosity, everybody else in our family would probably feel the same way.

After you do the “real oldies,” I suggest moving on to the slightly less oldies. That’s what we did, anyway, culling the photos taken during, or shortly before, my childhood years. My niece and I found that the photos from this era were the easiest to sort.

We saved almost all of the earlier, mostly black and white, photos from this era, partly because they were beautiful and taken by my father, a gifted darkroom photographer, but also because there were not too many of them, and most were photos of us or of people we loved.

(By the way: are there also photographs from your spouse/partner’s forebears under that bed? If so, I strongly urge you to encourage your spouse to sort them, and to leave them unsorted if that doesn’t happen.)

Lucy’s other photographs were mostly snapshots from the past forty or fifty years. After getting rid of all duplicate prints (except for a few standouts we set aside for our respective siblings), we decided to toss all negatives and almost all storage CDs, since anybody who ever wanted to could make perfectly adequate copies directly from the prints. Then we tossed all photos of people we did not know and were pretty sure neither Lucy nor any of our other our living relatives knew, either.

By the way: One thing we did NOT do was label any of the photos we kept. Even though we were pressed for time, I now think that this was a bad mistake. Don’t do what we did! Google and YouTube can show you how to mark photos safely with a pen. You will be doing a service to your descendants, and preventing your current family from becoming the 2070 equivalent of those anonymous ladies in feathered hats.

Next to go were most of the travel photos, including almost all the famous landmarks, natural wonders, and museum art. The rule was: if you can get more or less the same image from an outside source, toss it. As we got tired, we broadened this rule, and started throwing out all artistically meh photos of places and objects, with a very few exceptions like wedding dresses, interior shots of beloved former homes, and a few cars we considered members of the family. Speaking of members of the family, we surprised ourselves by agreeing to throw out most of the pet snapshots, mostly because there were so many of them: pictures of one cat in particular, now dead these forty years and more, made a pile twice the size of the pile for photos of my father. We also found that cats, and some dogs, do not have all that many different facial expressions, at least not in amateur photographs.

Even after we crammed about fifty more photos into Lucy’s boxes, this process still left us with three times as many recent snapshots as my niece or I wanted to keep. We kept sorting and discarding until our choices started to seem totally arbitrary. So we gave up: but we had gotten down to just a couple more cubic feet than we had wanted to take home, and that was good enough for us. I drove back up 95 feeling like a silver medalist and told myself that it was sensible to have a cushion of photos in case in case Lucy decided she needed more fading snapshots of some dog or prom or lighthouse or other.

I hope this narrative of my recent adventures in photo wrangling has encouraged you and given you a few ideas. But I see that I haven’t really addressed those photos of your children and how to choose among them, which sounds like the most serious problem, the one that gets a person thinking in terms of Sisyphus’s boulder and Hercules’s labors and, of course, the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. My Florida experience is not much help here, since we found relatively few unique photos of the people we most cherish; and, as I admitted back in the distant past when I began this letter, I have not yet tackled the nuclear-family photos in my own closet. But it occurs to me that I am writing this as an advice columnist, not a road-trip memoirist or role model, and I do have a few more suggestions to offer in my capacity as the wise June. These apply to all your photos, but especially to those evocative, heartstring-tugging photos of your kids.

First, choose a day to get started, and set aside a block of time: day, weekend, recurring shorter periods, whatever works. Mark your paper calendar in red and your digital one with dramatic emoji, announce your plans to your friends, put in for a personal day; in short, do what you need to make the starting time stick. You can set a deadline as well as a starting point, if you want, but I suspect that imposing any but the loosest deadline on a project like this will only add to your stress, making it harder to begin at all and easier to abandon if you do. Once started on the project, though, it will probably take on a momentum of its own – and even if this does not happen, you will have made some headway or least assessed the situation. Sort of like grading papers. Or writing.

If you have tried to break down your task and still feel daunted, consider further subdividing it. If you are sorting by era and have, say, four boxes of family photos from 1990-2000, you might aim to do two of them per session. If you finish early, you can always pull out more boxes.

Second, consider getting somebody to assist you. The right person can be a great help getting you started, keeping you moving, and lessening your anxiety and indecision along the way. Having an adult child or even a supportive friend with you should help insulate you from the regrets you say you sometimes feel when confronting certain of these images.

The problem here, of course, is that you have to find somebody who is willing to do the job and won’t actually make it harder for you. Have you thought about asking one or more of your kids to help? My niece was just about perfect for the Florida photos: a close relative, but from another generation. She also had similar, but not identical, attitudes about what sorts of images should be preserved and why. Also important: neither of us tried to talk the other one into discarding any photographs we wanted to keep – which, happily, lessened the tension and actually made many photos easier to sort and discard.

I can see why you might feel this is a job you would rather undertake alone, but do consider the idea, if only because scheduling a session with one or more other people would be a great prod to get started and keep going. If you can’t find anybody, or don’t want anybody, to help with the actual sorting, you could invite a friend or relative over just to sit with you, for moral support. Sort of like grading papers at Starbucks. Or working in a writer’s room. Your moral supporter could bring knitting, perhaps, or a guitar.

Third, do as much no-brainer culling as you can (see Florida, above):

—Toss most if not all negatives of your old Walgreen’s prints and similar nonprofessional color prints. (If you have any photo CDs from the post-film, pre-smartphone era, you might want to take the time to upload them; even if you never look at the uploads again, having a backup is reassuring. Or don’t bother. We didn’t.)

—Remove obvious duds and photos you are sure nobody will care about. At the same time, remove all duplicate prints and put them in a separate pile. At some point—I favor doing this as I go along, but that might slow you down, or you might want to evaluate the whole pile first—decide which duplicate prints you think other people might want, and throw out the rest.

—As you take photos out of envelopes and boxes, and any albums you may decide to dismantle, do some preliminary labeling, and try to keep them in some sort of order, probably chronological. Then you can get rid of most of the envelopes and boxes as well as the albums. Yet another anecdote: Right before the pandemic I helped a friend sort photos after her sister died. The sister had been a performer and a bit of a hoarder, so there were thousands of photos; but they were all packed in smallish boxes that conformed to their size, and filed chronologically, with lots of labeling. I was amazed at how little space they took up on her shelves, and how easy it was for people to find specific photographs or subjects (and, I assume, toss the rest).

Fourth, and this is the part where you have to think and feel most deeply: now that you have done the emotion-free busy work, take a moment to evaluate how much more you want to cull this herd of remaining photos, and start sorting in earnest.

My hope is that you will find many groups of images where one stands out, and the others offer nothing really new or different, at least to your jaded mother-of-grown-children eyes—especially if you decide not to discard these similar images but to send them along to your kids or other loved ones.

Remember: as with books, one great way to downsize collections of photos is to give them away to people you know. For example, consider giving your children not just any duplicate prints of their childhood photos, but also all but one of those “three or four or five” photos of the same “precious moments.” You could even throw in some photos from other collections—your wedding, your own baby pictures, a favorite cousin—or any photos you’re ambivalent about but hope one of these other people would like and/or has some stake in. (I gave my son about 98% of our rugby photos. Unlike me, he can tell them apart. He is glad to have them, and would not have wanted me to destroy them. ) Then send these new mini-collections off right away—preferably in decorative boxes, to underscore their status as thoughtful gifts. Your kids will probably be delighted.

Giving these photos away will free up some closet space without consigning any images to oblivion, and will give your children or any other recipients you designate a chance to see and own photos they may cherish, and can always dispose of or digitize themselves if they don’t. Sometimes kicking the can down the road actually makes sense.

With any luck, pruning those similar images, and your earlier no-brainer culling of dupes and duds, along with unremarkable sunsets, zoo animals, other people’s kids at bat, etc., will leave you with a collection you find manageable and accessible.And remember that you can digitize whatever you want to these days. If, even after removing negatives and packaging and duplicates and duds and similar images from your collection, it still seems too large, this might be a good time to approach your family photos in a new way, thinking not of the photos you still want to discard but the ones you love most. My suggestion, if you have the time or money, is to digitize everything you have left, then select only the prints you treasure – the ones you would like to hold in your hands or pass around a table, the ones you would save if there were a fire. You can discard the other prints; or, if this makes you feel squeamish, you can consign them to some more remote storage site than your closet or under the bed, given that you are unlikely to be looking at them again any time soon.

If you have a decent digital camera or one of the newest smartphones, you can do some or all of this digitizing yourself. Your collection, even as pared down, does sound like it might be a bit large for DIY digitizing, and there’s no point in creating yet another daunting obstacle for yourself. So I would opt for spending some money on pros. But phones, personal cameras, and home computer software are great for filling in gaps here and there. When I was in Florida I made myself a little cardboard platform and took iPhone pictures of photos I had relinquished to Lucy or my niece but did not want to lose, then sent them to my kids. The images looked fine, and I have every hope of adding them to the digital albums I plan to create at some point in the nebulous future.

You can also use the wonders of modern computing to preserve some of your favorite photos not just in digital albums, but also in printed books that can be much easier to to store and retrieve than the old clunky albums used to be.

Fifth, please don’t expect perfection. You end your letter by saying that you want to “finally complete” this “overwhelming task” so you can “move on.” I see that. But unless you want to emulate my cousin Harold, you are going to be doing a lot of balancing and making a whole lot of compromises. If you are like me – a fan of Whitman and Dickens who loves getting lost in times and places, and would choose potential and inclusion over order almost any day – you may not sort your photographs as quickly or as thoroughly as you would like, and you may be left with more photos and less organization than you’d hoped for. Or you may decide that nothing but drastic reductions will free your mind. Either way is okay, and you can and should still move on.

Best of luck! I hope you emerge from under the weight of your photos and your memories before too long. Onward and upward and, as my mother used to tell me: do as I say, not as I do.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on August 28, 2021 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: Coronavirus II: The Old Marcher and the Masked Baby

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 9, 2020 by thwackJune 9, 2020

Black Lives Matter march

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!


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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

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Published on June 9, 2020 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Quarantine Edition

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 1, 2020 by thwackMay 1, 2020

nesting dolls wearing facemasks

Dear Readers,

First, let me apologize to you for not having posted in so long. What with one thing and another, my alter ego in the real word became preoccupied. But the pandemic has vastly increased her free time: once she has decontaminated the day’s deliveries, Zoomed for an hour or two, walked the dog, done a little reading and writing, sent off a few irate messages to our elected (who knows how, as Gerard Manley Hopkins would say) officials, and beaten back despair and other existential stuff with carbs and Netflix, there’s really nothing left to do except cleaning and giving advice. So here I am; and, happily, my re-emergence has coincided with a flurry of novel-coronavirus questions. Ahem!

—Love, June


I.

a woman typing furiously wearing a facemask

Dear June,

I live with my sister. She is constantly reminding me how grateful we should be because we are safe and solvent, have a roof over our heads, etc. She has always been like this, but now that we are stuck at home because of the coronavirus she is going into high gear with the gratitude.

I like to think that I am as appreciative as the next person, but right now I am feeling scared and restless and claustrophobic. I miss my friends, I get frustrated working from home because I suck at tech, I am worried about the future, and I miss my boyfriend, who is back in his hometown for the duration. But I can’t talk about any of this to her, or even really show it, because it sets off her whole gratefulness thing. I am losing my shit. Do you have any advice for me? Do you think that I am a spoiled First World person? Should I confront my sister? 

—Whiny Ingrate

Dear Not-So-Whiny Friend,

Although you, like me, are comparatively lucky in many ways as we face this pandemic, you don’t strike me as especially spoiled. The issue doesn’t come down to being spoiled and self- absorbed on the one hand or being actively, vocally, continually grateful on the other. We all just have to get through this.

It is wonderful to feel gratitude. Although I confess that I have a hard time myself trying to summon up that old thankful feeling when it won’t come naturally, I envy people who can, or don’t have to. Counting one’s blessings and trying to have a positive attitude are both good ways to gin up one’s mental health a bit, stay calm, and sleep better. Gratitude can also be a way of gaining perspective, another thing I’m in favor of because perspective—in the sense of seeing how well off one is, relative to the way things could be—tends to make the more fortunate among us smarter and kinder and less tiresome.

But enforced or, worse, competitive gratitude is another matter entirely. I am not sure if your sister is one of them, but there are plenty of gratitude-enforcers out there who believe that we have some sort of obligation to swell with grateful joy for most of our waking hours. This is irritating, and it is none of their business. What I find especially annoying about people who try to shove gratefulness down our throats is the way they seem to hit their stride just when we have more things than usual to feel ungrateful about. Of course, we are glad that we didn’t die when our new car got totaled, that our extremely painful stomach condition is not life-threatening, that our cat lived a happy life. But we would still rather have our car, our digestion, and our cat—and few things are more enraging than people who use the language of cheerful concern when what they are really telling us is to get over ourselves and suck it up.

So it is during this during this pandemic. Those of us who are healthy, financially secure, and working from home obviously have it much better than those who are hospitalized with the virus, newly unemployed, destitute, or risking their lives at essential jobs. I am sure that you honor the essential workers and sympathize with people in trouble. But it doesn’t make you a monster if you also feel, or even say from time to time, that you would really like to go out and have a beer or get your shoes fixed or have sex or not wake up at three A.M. from nightmares about gasping out your last breath alone, in a ventilator, while armed protesters waving Confederate flags and swastikas march past your room.

Since neither of us has anywhere to go just now, let me tell you a story. I came close to losing it myself during a Zoom meeting last week where a colleague of mine, “Melanie,” almost drove another colleague to tears with her toxic positivity. As one does, we were breaking the ice by going around the room, or in this case the screen, reporting on how we were all holding up during the stay-home-orders phase of this pandemic. Most of us answered with some variant of “we’re fine, just a little-stir-crazy,” but our youngest member, a single mom named “Lara,” told us in a trembling voice that she was really having a hard time coping with a toddler and a full-time on-line job, couldn’t sleep, and was starting to doubt that her new medication would ever kick in. While the rest of us were all making soothing noises and trying to convey sympathy and understanding as best we could considering that our faces were low-resolution blobs the size of postage stamps, Melanie—whose turn it admittedly was—started telling the group how lucky we all were, brightly emphasizing the all, while looking at Lara as pointedly as one can look at one among many low-resolution blobs. For the rest of the meeting Melanie never missed an opportunity to say something about how blessed and we were, or how we should never lose sight of our privilege. I am sure I am not the only person who felt that Melanie was not just ignoring but actually rebuking poor Lara, who left the meeting early.

You are a good-enough person. Don’t let your sister get to you.

But should you confront her? I don’t see any real ethical issue here: the only question is whether confronting her would work. I would love to help you find an answer, but your letter does not tell me much about her motives, or how she responds to criticism.

I can’t tell whether, when she says that she or you or somebody else “should” be grateful, she is passing moral judgment or simply talking about relative good luck. For all I know, she may simply have a sunny personality, and most or all of her pronouncements may be sincere, if utterly counterproductive, attempts to cheer you up.

On the other hand, her expressions of gratitude may be pious, passive-aggressive dismissals of other people’s reality. Or they may be a little of both. Or they may be words she no longer really hears herself saying, knee-jerk reactions she’s picked up from a few too many inspirational articles or sermons or Hallmark Channel movies. Or she may be talking more to herself than to anyone else, trying to beat back dissatisfactions of her own.

You may not much care what her motives are; her “gratefulness thing” would be annoying no matter what the source, and I suppose the issue is not so much whether your sister means well as whether you can get her to stop. But it may be easier to rein her in—or, perhaps, to accept the inevitable– if you give them some thought.

Have you ever tried to tell her how you feel? Your asking whether you should confront her suggests not. If you don’t think she will just go on the defensive and dig in, I suggest that you make the attempt. It does not have to be in the form of a confrontation, or even a formal sit-down. You could just wait for an opening in one of your daily conversations and try to explain that sometimes her cheerfulness in the face of your worries and fears makes you feel worse for not being as happy as you “should” be. If you want to risk a possibly hostile, and almost definitely touchy-feely discussion, you could go on to explain that you sometimes feel that she is not listening to you, or even that she believes you are not entitled to your feelings—but that might be taking things too far, especially given that you are locked in the same house with her for the foreseeable future.

Good luck. And if your sister keeps up with the relentless gratefulness and good humor, take heart by thinking about the tens of thousands of us other “lucky” Americans, safe at home, who still curse the fates with some regularity these days.

You are not alone.

—June


 

three atms with customers

II.

Dear June,

If there are three ATMs in a row, and the two end ones are being used, is it okay to use the middle one at the same time?

—Impatient

Dear Imp,

Unless the ATMs are each six feet apart, it is not okay. The same goes for picnic tables, urinals (or trees, or whatever else men pee against), parallel checkout lines, and everything else that is not six feet away from the next thing. I am sure that, as a fellow Earthling, you know that six feet is the current minimum for safe social distancing—and we should definitely regard this as a true minimum and aim for wider distances whenever possible, since people tend to sway, stumble, make wide turns, and forget what they are supposed to be doing.

This six-feet concept does not strike me as hard to understand. Implementing it in the face of your more oblivious or obnoxious fellow-Americans may be another matter though, as we’ll see in the next letter.

Stay safe, my impatient friend.

—June


woman wearing a welding mask in supermarket

III.

Dear June,

I was in the supermarket yesterday and the man behind me in line was clearly closer than six feet away as marked on the floor AND he was touching everything around him AND his so-called mask wasn’t covering his nose. I didn’t know how to let him know how much this bothered me without making the situation even worse by raising my voice over my mask or moving farther away and into someone else’s space ahead of me—is there a good way of letting people around you know about the guidelines without increasing the risks?

—Crowded and Tense

Dear C & T,

I agree that moving closer to the person ahead of you may make the problem worse: you will be in her space, and the person behind you is likely to move up and maintain the same unsafe distance as before. A better bet is to try to get the offender to move backwards, or at least stand still until you may safely move ahead.

I don’t know what kind of mask you have, but I have taken some walks with a friend where we both wore two-ply cloth masks and stayed six feet apart, and we did not have too much trouble keeping up a conversation—although, come to think of it, we have become much more economical and impersonal in our speech lately, with fewer confidences and almost no adverbs, now that we have to shout at each other in public spaces. But my point is that, unless you are wearing a plastic face shield, or an N-95 under a balaclava, you will be heard if you turn around and say “Six feet away, please!” to someone who is fewer than six away from you. Just be sure to enunciate clearly. It could help if, still clearly enunciating, you also said : “I might have the virus.” After all, any of us might.

If he says, “Oh, sorry,” and immediately backs up, looking sheepish, you could perhaps add a reminder about how masks work – but you and those around you should be okay if he maintains a safe distance so, if he gives any indication that he is the kind of jerk who might take offense and do something really stupid, I would hold my tongue about the mask.

If the line behind you and the offender is very long, or otherwise likely to experience some sort of domino effect if he backs up, you will have to assess the situation. If you are towards the front of the line or near a store employee, you could ask them to reposition the line, while gesturing meaningfully with your masked head toward the person behind you. Otherwise you should probably wait until the person in front of you has moved up and then, before advancing yourself, ask the offender to move up a only few feet so a safe distance can be maintained.

As for his touching everything, it sounds as if most of the damage has already been done. I would bide my time and tell Customer Service once you check out, on the off chance that somebody in authority wants to do a little extra spraying the areas the offender may have touched—although that is likely to be the whole store. This is why I hope that, since you are a careful person, you treat everything you buy AS IF somebody touched it. We all should.

Be careful out there!

—June


repeated image of empty toilet paper rolls against a yellow background

IV.

Dear June,

My fiancé and I moved in together two years ago. Bob and I have a tiny apartment, basically one sunny kitchen-living room, a small bedroom, and a smaller bathroom. The bedroom door is just a curtain, because of some zoning law about windows, and so there is really no privacy unless you’re in the bathroom.  

Until the virus hit, we didn’t have any serious problems with the small apartment or with our relationship. We have been happily talking about getting married, which we plan to do about a year from now if all goes well. We have very different careers, in different parts of the city, so our lives have been totally separate during the day. Nights and weekends we’d spend maybe a third of our waking hours at home together, and the rest of it outside the apartment – either together, on our own, or with our separate friends.  

We live in a coronavirus hot spot and have been here in the apartment together for six weeks. Our life is safe and orderly. We both work long hours from home, doing jobs we like. Once a week we lay in supplies. Every so often we walk over to a nearby park at off-peak hours for a socially-distanced walk. Thanks completely to me, we also have a Zoom movie club and weekly happy hour.

The problem is not so much that I am getting lonely and a little bit bored. That is to be expected under the circumstances. The real problem is that my fiancé just loves this life. He says he is so happy that now he gets to work every day with his back six inches from mine. That we sit down together every single night to watch Netflix or read books on the same couch. That we eat every meal together. He told me the other day that sometimes he wishes it would never end. He seems to find this idea romantic, but I find it stultifying. Last night we were sitting next to each other on the couch watching reruns and he took my hand and said; “Isn’t this lovely? This is what life will be like in 40 years, when we retire. I can hardly wait.” It was all I could do not to shudder.  

Add to this that he is starting to irritate me in all sorts of small ways. Words he overuses, ear hair, stuff like that. I am starting to look forward to work meetings because one of us has to go into the bedroom to attend them. I don’t think I could survive twenty or thirty years of retirement if it were anything like this—not with Bob, anyway. I have no idea what to do. Should I talk to Bob about this? Do you think this is a warning from God about what I have to look forward to?

—Stifled

Dear Stifled,

I like to think that God would not kill some 200,000 people just to warn you about Bob, but your own inner voice may be trying to tell you something. Let’s try to decide whether to listen.

First, as to the small irritations: It is perfectly natural to feel irritated by anybody with whom you are forced into constant close contact, even someone you love very much. Although comfortable, your quarters are extremely cramped for a quarantine situation. You apparently have no in-person social contact with anybody other than Bob. The world outside is terrifying and the future is unclear. If you thought of your fiancé as adorable 24-7 under these circumstances, I would worry a little. It is of course possible that your current irritation with Bob will persist, or even increase, after we return to whatever normal we are going to return to. But there will be time enough to worry about that later; and what you’re feeling now, in these extraordinary circumstances, has very little predictive value.

As to Bob’s loving this life: I do worry, just a little, about that. But perhaps all he is saying is that he treasures you, not that he would really want the two of you to live a confined, sedentary, predictable existence from now on. He may also, like many of us, feel a certain anxiety about what happens next; at least, for the time being, he and the woman he loves are safe at home while deadly microbes, economic depression, government insanity, a changing climate, and angry ignorant people swirl around outside. (Think of Ygritte in the cave, if you watched Game of Thrones.)                                     

We have to believe that repeated lengthy stay-at-home orders will not be the norm, in which case the real question is not how happy or irritating Bob is in his present situation, but whether he proves to be just as happy and significantly less irritating when the stay-at-home orders are lifted. If he does, everything should be fine. And if he doesn’t, you will be free to move on.

As to the remark about retirement: I admit that, on first reading, Bob’s looking forward to so tedious a retirement gave me pause. But this may just be a clumsy way of saying that his job is stressing him out. Or maybe he was trying to pay you another extravagant compliment, on the order of “I’d rather be under house-arrest with you than in surfing in Cancun with anybody else,” and it came out kind of creepy. It also occurs to me that, by the time you are in your later retirement years (say 85), you too might actually like to live a quiet life with your longtime partner.

I think that your far-off and theoretical retirement is a topic you can safely, even humorously, discuss with Bob right now, both to sound him out about how he really views your distant future together, and as a metaphor for your current restlessness. Let him know that, as long as you can still get around, you plan to do so, and that you look forward to spending your golden years building latrines in developing nations, reviving your torch-singing career, running for office, and the like. If he seems receptive, add that you are also looking forward to adventures in the much nearer future.

In the meantime, feel free to speak up about specific minor irritations if you think doing so will, to borrow language from all the drug tests we hear about lately, be safe and effective. (You might ask him if, since the barbershops are all closed, he’d like you to clip those ear hairs.) But as for the overarching issue of his generally irritating you so much these days, I would definitely keep mum for now, and possibly forever. With any luck, it won’t be long until the world opens up again and you can do what you need to let off steam, which is sure to include seeing a lot more of other people and a little less of Bob. Or things will get so much worse that a few ear hairs won’t matter any more—you’ll be too busy teeming up to beat back locusts and lance boils.

I hope that you get sprung soon, and that Bob shares your joy when you do.

—June

P.S. Are you planning on having kids? In that case, Bob’s love of home and capacity for what most of us see as boredom could become a major asset. He can be the one who plays Candyland and restacks blocks over and over and, in the fullness of time, helps with the Math homework.


V.

pink teddy bear in blue face mask

Dear June,

Hi! I have two kids, five and seven. My kids were in our yard playing nicely together, when my next-door neighbor’s kid wandered over and asked to join them.  

What should they have told him? What should I tell them to tell him in the future?

 As for my neighbor, why won’t she talk to me?

—Dubious Dad


Dear Dubious,

Cryptic letter, this. What did you or your kids, in fact, do when the neighbor kid came over? And has your neighbor stopped speaking to you because she is angry about whatever you or your kids did, or is she simply refusing to talk about social distancing while letting her kid traipse all over the neighborhood?

No matter. Let’s look to the future.

Here’s what you should do: call or email and explain whatever happened. Tell your neighbor that you are following the recommendations [or, depending on where you live, the legal requirements] for social distancing and aren’t having anybody over to your house for the time being. Ask her to explain this to her child. It wouldn’t hurt to say something friendly, like how sad it is that these delightful kids can’t play together until the stay-at-home order is lifted. You could even suggest that your three kids all go on line and play some age-appropriate video game.

As for your own kids, I assume that they know that there is a virus going around and that this is why they are staying home from school and not seeing grandma and so on. Make sure they also know that this distancing rule goes for EVERYBODY unless you tell them otherwise. Tell them that, if the neighbor kid comes over again, they should—very nicely—say “Sorry, we can’t play because of the virus” and immediately come back inside the house and find whatever adult is supposed to be watching them. The said adult should then call the neighbor and remind her (or her partner, if any). Tell your kids that this goes for any child who comes into the yard.

If the kid keeps coming over, keep sending him home and calling the neighbor. And for God’s sake, watch out for your own kids. At five and seven, they can’t be expected to negotiate issues of social distancing with other young children.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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 credits: Evgeni Tcherkasski, engin akyurt, Yunming Wang, Nathan Van de Graaf, visuals, and L N on Unsplash.

 

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Published on May 1, 2020 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

Ask June: Autumn Edition!

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 29, 2019 by thwackOctober 29, 2019

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 21st– 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.

 

ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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

 

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Published on October 29, 2019 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Secular Protest and Bin There Dun That

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 8, 2019 by thwackJune 8, 2019

Two trash cans in an alley

Dear June,

One of my closest friends—I’ll call her Leah—keeps referring to me as Catholic, even though I have repeatedly told her that I am no such thing. My parents and three of my grandparents are Catholic and I was raised Catholic, even went to parochial school until I was eleven. But I haven’t gone to church since the first Sunday after I left for college, which was over fifteen years ago. I consider myself an agnostic and don’t belong to any religious institution.

I have explained all this to Leah, but the last two times we went out with a group she did the Catholic thing again. One of the times we were talking about abortion restrictions and she asked me how I felt about this “as a Catholic.” The other time she joked with the other people at our dinner table that she and I were a “mixed” Jewish-Catholic friendship—and later that night, when we were alone, she asked me whether I had been upset when he group was talking about child sexual abuse in the Catholic clergy.

I am about to marry an equally secular person who comes from a Buddhist family. When Leah heard the news, she asked me how we were handling our religious differences.

How do I get through to her?

—Exasperated in Exton

Dear Ex Squared,

I think you should keep talking to Leah about this. She may know that you disagree with her, but not that you are offended. Tell her you want to make sure she understands how much you dislike it when she acts as if you still have a relationship with or allegiance to the Catholic Church. You can be nice about it, as long as you don’t mince words. Say that she needs to stop making assumptions about your religious affiliation and sharing them with other people. If, as you say, she is one of your closest friends, she should be able to hear you out without becoming hurt or angry.

Leah may not understand how completely your beliefs have changed. If you value her friendship, which you seem to, try (again) to explain how these changes happened. But belief and dogma may not be what your friend is talking about when she calls you a Catholic: I suspect that the two of you have different senses of what it means to belong to a religion. Some individuals, and some denominations, think of religion as mostly or even solely a matter of faith and adherence to dogma: I was brought up to believe that accepting the basic tenets of my religion, or at least trying to, was absolutely required for continued membership. Other people, and other denominations, see religious identity more in terms of tradition, history, ritual, family background, or ethnicity. This may be the way your friend tends to see her own religious identity—which makes plenty of sense given not only the many rich traditions of Judaism, many of which have little or nothing to do with dogma, but also the fact of the Holocaust, where nobody was asking about personal beliefs before they wiped out millions of people. Leah may think of you as a “secular Catholic”—a term which probably sounds like a contradiction in terms to you, as it does to me, at least as regards the American version of Catholicism. This is an issue you might want to explore with her—unless you are getting tired of the whole topic, which is also just fine.

As for your upcoming marriage, Leah’s response may have more to do with concern over your and your intended’s different cultural backgrounds, your families’ attitudes, and so on than with whether the two of you are likely to come to blows over the transubstantiation or the path to nirvana. So I would give her a bye on this one—unless she jumped right in with the “religious” differences question before asking you anything else about the wedding, or even congratulating you!

And as for the “mixed friendship” thing, is your friend simply saying, basically, that she’s Jewish and you’re not? This, of course, is true whether or not you are still a Catholic. But the phrase strikes me as overwrought and slightly off, as if the two of you are flying in the face of some norm instead of just, you know, hanging out. Context is everything here: was her remark part of some light banter after she’d referred to Mary as part of the Trinity or you’d ordered a blueberry bagel with lox and butter? Or did she raise the subject in a general way, one that would hint at her being more preoccupied than you’d like with religious difference? If the latter, that may be the real problem you and she have to work on, or cope with, or conceivably even split over, at some point in your lives.

I hope and trust not, though. Communication should work things out in time. In any case, you should probably not be worrying right now about any deeper implications of what she has been saying, much less discussing them. For the time being, just do what you can to get her to drop the subject until after you have gotten through the stress and excitement of your wedding. With luck, she will understand your annoyance and the issue will evaporate. Mazel tov!


Dear June,

I have a neighborly issue with my new neighbors—well, really a case of over-neighborliness. I’d be grateful for your advice.

My new neighbors moved in two months ago. They’re an established couple in their mid-twenties who have bought the house from his mother (it’s been in their family for generations). I’m very happy because they are nice, polite, helpful and responsible—all the things we like neighbors to be.

I had a bad experience with a new neighbor several years ago which forced me to relocate, so I’ve been keen to make a good impression and establish friendly terms from the off. Part of this has been putting their wheelie bin out front on bin night (here in the UK each household puts their rubbish in big plastic ‘wheelie bins’ which are emptied once a week). This is something the previous neighbors and I would do for each other on a ‘whoever gets there first’ basis, and I think it’s a great way to maintain good relations. The problem with the new neighbors is that I’ve realized it’s always me who does the bins (both out and back in). Week after week, when I can see they’re in and hear them coming and going, it’s always me. Recently he told me they’d do the same for me of course, but he also said he only ever remembers it’s bin night when he hears me doing it. In other words, I’ve inadvertently become the Bin Fairy for next door.

This probably sounds very petty, and more so when I say that she did me a favor early on by spotting that I’d left my keys in my front door on my way in. They have also been generous in loaning me decorating equipment, and of course I’d do any similar one-offs for them. But this kind of assumed role wasn’t part of the plan, and what gets me is that now I’ve been doing both bins so regularly I feel it would look odd and potentially unfriendly for me to put my own bin out/in but leave theirs. 

They’re a young couple and this is their first place together. They’ve rented here and there in the past, but have only had household responsibilities very briefly. Given the chance to establish a routine, I’m sure they would remember that Monday night is bin night and there would no longer be a problem: sometimes they’d do it, sometimes I’d do it. But as it stands nothing happens unless I do it, and I feel bad about doing mine but not theirs, even though theirs is often obstructed by stuff in their yard (which they might clear if they had to wheel their bin around it).

Do you have any suggestions about this, June? It sounds so silly (and I’ve essentially brought the situation on myself), but these little things can cause bad feeling and misunderstandings in the longer term. I’d basically like to either share the wheelie bin honors or just deal with my own (for all I know they might actually prefer to do it separately)—but I don’t know how to do this having established this precedent.

Many thanks,

—Bin There in Brighton

Dear Bin,

Can you bear to live with two weeks’ worth of wheelie rubbish buildup? If so, here’s what I suggest: skip next Monday, or the next Monday when you have minimal trash. (I hope it’s okay to call British rubbish “trash” now and again.) In the unlikely event that your neighbors rally round and take out both bins, thank them and inwardly and hope that they are starting to see the light about sharing—or getting better at remembering when trash day is.

If they don’t take out either bin, which of course is what I am betting on, write or call them on Tuesday and say that you’re sorry, that you totally forgot to put out the wheelies and it seems that they did, too. Then ask them if they’d mind if you each just dealt with your own bins from now on, because that way you’ll only have to worry about forgetting yours. Add that, if they need your help on any specific Monday, all they have to do is ask. If you want, you might also say something vaguely apologetic about having needlessly complicated matters by suggesting shared rubbish responsibility. If you discuss the situation in terms of avoiding confusion, I doubt that your neighbors will be at all upset or offended.

I’m not sure which form of communication would work best in your situation: phoning, or even chatting when you happen to meet, are obviously less formal than writing, and might seem friendlier. Writing, whether a paper note or an email or a rather long text, has the benefit of precision and predictability: you wouldn’t have to fret about being tactless or looking nervous or not making yourself clear. But if you’ve never written anything to them before, doing so now might make it seem as if you are chiding them. If all but the chummiest face-to-face contact makes you tense, and you worry that you might stammer or blurt out something silly or forget your point, try a very friendly note, especially if you and your neighbors have communicated this way before. Otherwise call them or knock on their door, or waylay them, after practicing your best rueful smile.

If your neighbors put out only their own bin on your experimental Monday—unlikely but possible—then, of course, you can and should resume putting out only yours, without further comment.

I wish I could come up with a solution that would involve no stress at all. But alas! If you feel uneasy at even the minor prospect of conflict resulting from my proposal, all you can do is just suck it up, as we say in the States, and keep taking out both bins.

Good luck with your neighbors and their rubbish. And please don’t worry about your problems being petty or “silly.” While it is true that we’re not talking about world peace here, we are talking about peace between neighbors, which can loom very large if you are one of them. I can understand your anxiety, especially given that you actually ended up relocating once before because of your neighbors. Feeling safe and calm at home is a big deal in this stressful world. Besides, one person’s minor annoyance can be another person’s calamity. I say this as a woman who once asked her journal whether anybody else had ever contemplated moving to another state and starting over because of a really bad situation with a carpool.

Thanks, and keep writing.

—June


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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: Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash

 

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Published on June 8, 2019 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: Accountin’ for Writing’ and the Untidy Neighbor

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 4, 2019 by thwackJune 4, 2019

Little girl behind teddy bear, shallow focus

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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

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Published on June 4, 2019 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Bailing Grandma and the Forbidden Love Lover

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 3, 2019 by thwackJune 3, 2019

person in bed clutching eyeglasses

Dear June,

My mother is a wonderful person, kind and smart and fun to be with. So I was really happy when my husband took a tenured position at a college near the town where I grew up and my mom still lives, even though the move was not so great for my own career. My kids, seven and nine, adore her, and so do Jason and I.

One of the things I like best about her is that she has always known how to take advantage of the world around her, finding out about great things to see and do and sharing her enthusiasm with others. Since I moved back she and I have been going out to the theater or other cultural events about once a week. Or we used to. Lately she keeps biting off more than she can chew, so I find that she is constantly inviting me to things, or accepting my invitations, and then begging off at the last minute. I have to say that, as far as I know, she never cancels because a better opportunity has come up. She always makes good on any financial loss, like nonrefundable tickets or a babysitter’s cancellation fee. And she always offers to give me both tickets if she is the one who paid. But it is still disappointing.

What usually happens is that, at some point on the day of the event, often just two or three hours before we’re set to leave, she will call and say that she has a bit of a cold, or a touch of some bug, or realizes that she did too much that morning or the day before, and just isn’t up to it.

Since I have little kids and a spouse who often works late, setting up these evenings is not always easy. And by the time she calls it is almost always too late to arrange something with another friend, or get a sitter if my husband is home and free to go with me (i.e., no homework help needed, no school projects, no youth sports, no taxes, home work or urgent laundry to do). Sometimes I go to the event alone, which I don’ t much like, but usually I stay home.

It is getting so she cancels more often than not. Any advice?

—Puzzled in Piermont

Dear Puz,

I wish you had told me more about your mom’s health and stamina. I suppose she may be a hypochondriac, or have poor time-management skills, or just have had a run of bad luck, but it seems more likely that she and her immune system are slowing down, or that she has a medical condition. The same outgoing spirit and joie de vivre that have always made her so much fun as a companion may be making her unduly optimistic about how much fun she can actually handle.

So, first things first: how much do you know about your mom’s state of health? Is she getting good medical care? Find out what you can, and try to make sure that she is seeing the right providers, and that she isn’t understating her symptoms and their recent effects on her life. She may have some very simple health issue, like a vitamin deficiency or endocrine imbalance that can be controlled with medication. Or she may have a more serious problem. Changes in overall vitality and susceptibility to infections should be looked into, no matter what one’s age.

Second things second: how to handle the cancellations themselves? It would be great if your mom did turn out to have a highly treatable medical problem. But life is rarely that simple. Your mom may be getting more frail and tiring more easily as she ages. Or she may have a chronic illness and be in denial about it, or trying to spare you. If—whatever the reason—your mom keeps cancelling on you, I can see why you would find the situation annoying. Even so, I would go very easy on her. Try not to sound angry or exasperated when she calls. I get the sense that this planning and anticipation are an important part of her relationship with you and her engagement with the world, and that discouraging them could adversely affect her sense of well-being and even her health. Besides, what would you say? You could perhaps talk to her in a general way about avoiding situations where she gets tired from having been too active earlier in the day, or the day before, and then having to cancel something she would probably rather have done. You could certainly call her a couple days before any specific event, and remind her to rest up. But, as for those recurrent “bugs” and “colds,” you can hardly tell her to stop getting sick, or to go out even if she feels terrible.

The worst “solution,” I think, would be to make fewer plans with her. I am a great believer in the benefits of even misplaced optimism. (In fact, I often wish I could drum up some for myself.)

Instead of scheduling fewer events, you might take the lead in scheduling somewhat different ones. Propose nights out (or in) that make her less likely to cancel, or that make you more likely to have a good time even if she does. You might suggest a restaurant dinner followed by a movie on HBO at her place: if she is feeling poorly, you can still bring her takeout and maybe still watch the movie. Include a mutual friend in your plans from time to time, so that if your mom cancels you will still have a companion. (You might even ask your husband on occasion.) When you can, steer your mom toward events that are easy to cancel or postpone, or that you’d be less likely to mind attending alone.

If you have a very flexible, and understanding friend, you could ask him or her to be on call for certain events you’d hate to miss but don’t want to attend unaccompanied. This arrangement could work well for plays or concerts with expensive or hard-to-get tickets, especially if the deal is that your friend goes for free, and maybe gets a dinner out of it.

We had a similar situation in my family, where one of my elderly aunts (the cool, Bohemian aunt) was forever making and cancelling elaborate, ambitious plans. It turned out that she had a very serious illness and all that event-scheduling had been a kind of whistling in the dark. I admired her pluck. Her son and daughter both found it a bit annoying, though, even after her diagnosis. But then again, I lived 200 miles away and didn’t have to deal with the situation—and perhaps, since she was my aunt and not my mother, I was more willing to accept how sick she was.

Good luck. It must be frustrating to cope with so much uncertainty, especially when your life already pulls you in several directions. But try to be patient. Your mother obviously thinks that it’s worth hoping against hope, making plans she may not be able to keep and paying for tickets she can’t always use, just for a chance to spend time with you and share activities she thinks you will both enjoy. I can tell how much you love and admire her. The next time she makes you crazy, think about how kind and smart and fun she is. She won’t be around to cancel on you forever.

P.S. La Wally and I read your letter a bit differently: she assumed that your main concern was missing out on precious time with your mother, while I though you wrote mostly out of frustration over all the wasted effort and missed events. I have to admit that La Wally’s interpretation is equally plausible, and more generous-minded.

La Wally says:

Has she spoken to her mom about it? She should tell her mom how important it is that they spend time together, and tell her to be especially careful not to do too much on days when they have plans. If her mom needs to stay home but does not just want to go to bed, the daughter should go over there to keep her company and take care of her. That way they can still enjoy each other’s company, just the two of them.


Dear June,

For almost three years, off and on, I have been seeing “Bryce,” the man I think of as the love of my life. Since the day I met him—I was dating his brother at the time, and had come to spend Thanksgiving at his family’s house—I have been totally smitten by him and, when things are good with us, I have never felt more delighted by another person. Or better understood.

He really gets me, as they say. But he keeps getting entangled with other women. First it was one of my housemates, then his TA, then a woman twice our age who is married to one of his college mentors. And there have been more.

It is true that Bryce has never explicitly said that he and I have an exclusive relationship. But he implies it all the time—partly by the way he sneaks around, and then acts all sheepish and ashamed when I do find out what he has been up to, but mostly by his constantly talking about how special and unique our relationship is. He says we have a true meeting of minds. He also says that he has never felt an attraction to anyone like the one he has for me. But then I will find out that he has gotten into yet another scrape.

We had been doing well for about six months. Then, about three weeks ago, that former housemate of mine let me know that Bryce had been sleeping with her again, and had given her the impression that he was no longer with me. I confronted him, went ballistic, and said I never wanted to see him again. Packed up his gifts and the few things of his he used to leave here and shipped them to his place. Blocked, erased, and otherwise completely avoided him.

I confess that I did read the stack of paper letters he mailed me begging for forgiveness, making promises, and praising me. I was trying to convince myself to stop even doing that when he ambushed me in front of my apartment last week and proposed to me! He had some family ring and a bouquet of my favorite flowers. He went down on one knee, the whole bit. This took the air out of me, and I just stood there passively until he grabbed my arm at the elbow and walked me across the street, where there is a little park with stone benches. He sat me down and told me that my kicking him out had made him realize how crucial I was to him, and that he wanted us to embark on the “great adventure of state-sanctioned monogamy.” He talked about how he had been mulling this over ever since I confronted him. He’d thought about what I had said (most of which I can’t actually remember), and even consulted the experts, including his happily-married parents and Martin Luther. He talked about how Kierkegaard believed that erotic love could never be fully expressed outside of marriage. He even talked about kids. He told me that he has never believed in making vows he could not keep, and that he takes marriage vows very seriously indeed. He said that he felt as if he had finally grown up.

I told him that, for my part, I felt as if had been hit by a truck, and needed some time. But I have no idea what to do. Bryce is all I have ever wanted—if I could trust him. What do you think I should do? Would I be crazy to take him back and move in with him officially, even marry him? Could marrying him be the best way to hold onto him?

—Smitten in New Britain

Dear Smitty,

You might have a better chance of holding onto him if you married his brother. Or maybe his best friend, or boss. From what you’ve told me, Bryce thrives on forbidden love. He seems to love the thrill of violating taboos, breaking down other people’s resistance, and risking discovery. Although I suppose it is possible that he really does see marriage as representing a clear break with the past, giving rise to a whole new reality with new priorities and even new desires, I would not bet on it.

Bryce may be sincere now. After all, your dumping him gave you what, to Bryce, is a woman’s greatest attraction: you became unattainable, or close enough to it to get his juices flowing and ramp up his philosophical reference skills. But even if he is not currently making promises he already knows he can’t keep, think about how little effect social norms have had on him in the past—how, in fact, going against these norms is a pattern and may be a compulsion. In the three years you have been seeing him he has betrayed his mentor, stolen his brother’s girlfriend, taken advantage of a work subordinate (his T.A.), and persuaded one woman to cheat on her husband and another to deceive her housemate. And lied to you about most of it. Transgression excites this man, and being married or otherwise publicly monogamous might just add the thrill.

I strongly suspect that, if you two did start publicly and exclusively cohabiting, or even if you actually made it to the altar, Bryce’s promises would eventually become just another taboo he could not resist violating. (Do you ever wonder what he would have thought of you if you hadn’t been dating his brother?) This might happen right away: I can easily imagine his spicing up his own wedding with a “heart wants what it wants” episode triggered by some young cousin-bridesmaid. Or he might maintain his enthusiasm and sense of duty for months or even years, while still flush with conscious purpose and moral fervor—revived, perhaps, if you have a kid. But do you really think you can count on him to stay with you over the long haul?

And are you sure that this guy understands you in ways nobody else does? Some people, and some lovers, are great listeners and better talkers because, while they are with you, you are the only person in the world. The problem is that—whether from a sincere hyper-focus on the present, or from a conscious plan to charm or seduce—they often have a similar effect on everybody they find desirable and happen to be with. Bryce may be one of these people: many womanizers are. You should consider this possibility while trying to reconcile his history of deception and wide-ranging sexual activity with the “special” understanding and delight the two of you enjoy when you’re together.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to resist when the man of your dreams proposes, complete with flowers and a ring, to say nothing of philosophy. But grand gestures are easy. Slogging through life is what’s hard—and while it is possible that your finally standing up to Bryce has led to deep reflection and true conversion, it strikes me as more likely that Bryce can’t bear to lose you but may not, realistically, be able give you the honest, monogamous relationship I assume you want.

If your letter had asked for simple thumbs up or down, mine would have turned down, with gusto. But you seem convinced that Bryce is The One, or would be if he cleaned up his act, and you seem quite willing to give him a chance: your final question was about how best to hold onto him, not whether trying to would be a good idea.

My advice, therefore, is that you SERIOUSLY consider giving this guy the boot once and for all; but that, if you can’t or won’t dump him, you take things slowly. Evaluate his sincerity and purpose over time, and get plenty of counseling. By “counseling” I mean help from professionals, for each of you and for you as a couple. I do not mean talking only to each other, or relying on great thinkers from past centuries. Kierkegaard, by the way, is probably not the best guide you and Bryce could choose: after giving a 19th-Century philosopher’s version of the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech, he broke it off with his fiancée and remained single all his life, writing vividly about despair. His ringing endorsement of marriage was: “Marry or don’t marry, you’ll regret it either way.” And don’t even get me started on Luther. It’s true that he was a big fan of married nuns and clergy, and had a stable happy marriage to an ex-nun. But he also believed that women were created for the “precious and godly” task of bearing children, so I would give him a miss, too, and concentrate on exploring whether you can trust Bryce to be honest with you, and whether he can resist further dangerous liaisons.

La Wally says:

I would not marry him right away or move in with him either. I would tell him exactly what kind of relationship I want, which sounds like it means being exclusive and honest. Frankly, he does not sound all that great. So maybe he is not really The One, even if there is such a thing.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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:  twinsfisch on Unsplash

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Published on June 3, 2019 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: Dogged Romance and Beach Trouble

Cleaver Magazine Posted on January 16, 2019 by thwackJanuary 16, 2019

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


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on January 16, 2019 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Undercover Girlfriend and the Campaign Quandary

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 21, 2018 by thwackDecember 17, 2018

Dear June, 

I’ve been dating a girl I’ve come to love so much these past months. We started out as friends a few years back in high school and I began to develop feelings for her last year. Finally able to confess, I was relieved that she still wanted to be my friend, although I didn’t get a clear yes or no response to my confession. A few weeks later, I confronted her about how I still felt and she told me she wanted to be with me as well. I was so happy! We started dating, but it was off to a rocky start due to keeping it a secret from our friends and families. But after the rain came a rainbow so to speak and now we’ve been together since February. However, we still are keeping it a secret. Our seven month-iversary (I believe it’s called?) just passed and I can’t stop thinking about her family. My mom and brother know I’m with her, as well as two of my best friends and a friend of hers. Her mother has been nothing but kind to me, so I feel guilty for not telling her, as well as my other, extremely close friends. The issue with all of this is that I’m also a girl. We were both brought up Christian, but my mom and brother are way more relaxed about things than I think her family is, as well as my extended family, but I’ll keep this within our physical household limits. Her mom has spoken before about loving others and not judging anyone, but I can’t help feeling that she’ll come to dislike me if she finds out I, a girl, have been with her daughter all these months without saying a word, not to mention my girlfriend’s mother’s husband has clear views about same-sex relationships. As in, they’re wrong. 

Another thing that bothers me is that, although my mother and brother know I’m in this relationship, they still make jokes about me one day having a husband and kids as if I’m still the “straight” girl they raised. I know they don’t mean any harm, but it feels like they don’t see my relationship the way I see it, as something that can last long term. I don’t know what to do in this situation, so just keeping quiet and feeling guilty has been my song. My girlfriend and I have talked a lot about what to do before and we agreed to just keep it a secret, but this has been weighing on me so long now, especially when her mother calls me her “daughter’s friend” or says I’m “like her sister” (yikes) at times. Sorry for such a long message. 

Thank you for reading this far! And thank you for your advice column, June! You as well, La Wally! 

—Phlustered in Philadelphia 

Dear Phrend,

Please don’t feel that you have to apologize for a long message. It is much easier to answer detailed letters: less speculating, fewer alternate scenarios. And have you seen the length of some of my replies?

I can certainly understand why the situation with your girlfriend (let’s call her Adrian, a solid Philly name) and her family makes you feel tense and uncomfortable. It is no fun to worry that your warm relationship with them is based on their being—or pretending to be—unaware of the truth about your relationship with her, and it can be excruciating to have to watch what you say and do almost every minute you are with them, and to be forced into evasions and half-truths and maybe even some outright lies.

But I hope you realize that, even if you can’t help feeling guilty, you have nothing to feel guilty about. For one thing, it does not sound as if are going out of your way to create a false impression. (In fact, I wonder whether Adrian and her family are at the “don’t ask, don’t tell” stage of the coming-out process, with everybody preferring to avoid a confrontation. Of course, this might not prevent the family from being shocked, shocked if forced to face reality.) Besides, even if you were actively deceiving Adrian’s family, doing so would not be morally wrong, since having a same-sex relationship is not wrong in itself, and since you and Adrian apparently have good reason to expect some unpleasant and unwarranted responses if you do come out to her family.

Whether keeping the relationship secret from Adrian’s family is a good idea practically or psychologically is another matter—and, despite your references to “guilt,” I think that is what your letter is really about. There may come a point where the discomfort you feel around her family puts such a strain on your relationship with Adrian that her coming out strikes you as the only way to preserve it. From your letter, it sounds as if you may be reaching that point before too long. It may also have occurred to you that, either because one or both of you can’t maintain the “very good friends” pose much longer, or because you are out to other people and in other situations, Adrian should tell her family preemptively, while she can still have some control over how the family finds out. You may also have reason to fear that, the longer the two of you wait, the worse it will be when they do learn the truth.

On the other hand, one or both of you may sense that the better course is to keep quiet and let her folks catch on little by little, over time, on the theory that they will gradually come to know, and maybe even accept, the real situation through experience rather than some explicit announcement.

From your letter, I can’t tell whether either of you thinks that telling Adrian’s mother and stepfather about your real relationship will create problems for you, and her, beyond disapproval—some initial disappointment from her mother, perhaps, and a few distant harrumphs from her stepfather? Is there reason to worry that her mom and stepfather might go beyond just “disliking” you until they come around, but actually refuse to see you ever again, or even demand that Adrian stop seeing you? And what about Adrian—might they actually disown her? How much power—the bread-and-butter kind, not just emotional control—do they still have over her? Does she have a job? Is she still in school? Is she living at home? Is she financially dependent on her mom and stepdad for living expenses, tuition, or health insurance? Is her stepdad a seriously homophobic, patriarchal bully who controls the family dynamic and the purse strings? Does Adrian have a dad, and where does he fit in?

But here I am, speculating. I get the sense from your letter that, despite plenty of misgivings, you would come out to Adrian’s family if the choice were yours alone and that, at the very least, you would like to revisit the issue with her. Does Adrian know how stressed you are? Are you and she able to speak candidly about this stress and weigh it against some of the problems, even danger, that might result from coming out to her family? The two of you need to keep talking and, perhaps, reevaluate the situation.

As you seem to understand, the decision whether to come out to her family is Adrian’s, not yours. Few decisions are more personal and difficult; and if she decides that she is not ready, you will have to live with that. Bear in mind that, if her parents learn that you two are a couple, she is likely to be the one who bears the brunt of their anger and disapproval; her having deceived them, much less your having done so, will probably be of far less concern to them than her being in a same-sex relationship.

Even though the choice is hers, you can try to persuade her to come out—but without pressuring her: a tall order! And of course you can break up if the stress of secrecy becomes unbearable, although I suspect that, at least for the time being, there are less drastic measures you can take, such as seeing less of her family, spending more time with mutual LGBT friends and other supportive people, and hoping that Adrian comes around. Or that the secret leaks out. Or that her parents wise up on their own.

These practical and psychological issues are all worth exploring not just with Adrian, but also with a trusted professional counselor, a local LGBTQ organization, or a peer-counseling group. If you would rather stay anonymous, or stay home, the GLBT (yes, I know the acronym reverses the usual order) National Hotline, or its Youth Talkline for people under 25, might help. Google them. Remember, though, that peers are just that: it can be very useful to consult them, but you need to make up your own mind.

Now on to your own friends and family. As to those “extremely close friends” you haven’t told yet, try not to feel guilty about them, either. Tell them when you feel comfortable doing so, and weigh the practical pros and cons. Think about how likely it is that confiding in your closest friends will result in your being outed to your whole social circle, and maybe even Adrian’s if you and she come from the same community. (More likely than you think, in my experience.) On the other side of the equation, it’s worth considering whether telling one or more of these very close friends could be of real help to you, deepening the friendship and giving you other sympathetic listeners. (I’m assuming that these close friends would indeed be sympathetic. If not, who needs ‘em?) It’s also worth weighing, but not very heavily, whether your close friends will be hurt or angry when they eventually learn that you have told another close friend, but not them. In most cases, a true friend can be made to understand how hard it is to come out, especially when your partner wants to stay closeted, but be prepared for some initial stiffness.

As for your mother and brother: this has to stop. If you say so, I’ll accept that they mean no harm. But they are not taking you seriously. I think you should be explicit with them the next time they allude to your future as a married hetero mom. If you are bisexual and have told them so—or if you haven’t talked to them much about your orientation, and don’t know or don’t really feel like discussing whether you may be bisexual—try saying: “Come on, guys, I’m with Adrian and I hope to stay with her. Please lay off with the husband stuff.” If you are a lesbian and have told them so, say something more like: “Come on, guys, you know I’m a lesbian.”

If they keep it up with the future husband comments, escalate. Tell them that they are hurting your feelings and that’s it’s really important to you that they stop.

Do they talk about your future hubby and kids only when other people are around? If so, you will have to take them aside and give them a little private speech. Again, start off light and friendly, but ramp it up

I hope that you and Adrian work it out. Falling in love with a good friend, and finding out that she loves you, too, is uniquely wonderful. Whatever happens, you will always have that great joy to remember.

Long message!

La Wally says:
You need to talk to your girlfriend again! You have to make sure she knows how bad you feel. Then take it from there.

You also have to tell your mother and brother that you don’t want to hear those husband and kids remarks ever again. Don’t let them get away with this!

Ward would like to add:
You don’t have to tackle all these problems at once. Start by talking to your girlfriend—and try to be supportive no matter what she decides to do.


Dear June,

I’m a recent college graduate with mad STEM skills. I just started my first full-time job last June. My question is: should I quit it to go work on a political campaign until the election? I feel strongly about the candidate and even more strongly about the fate of the country. The job is unpaid, but my role will be important—and I think my skills could really help. Despite the fact that my parents are furious at the very thought of my quitting my job, the fact is that I am very employable, and could maybe even get my old job back, even though they are so pissed off at me they have refused to give me a leave of absence. I have enough money saved for college loan payments, health insurance, and really basic necessities for several months, and no rent to pay (since I never did get around to moving out of my parents’ basement). I have plenty of great places to couch surf in the other towns I may get sent to, and the campaign will help out with shelter if needed. There also seems to be plenty of food and coffee. What should I do? 

—Eager in East Falls

Dear EE,

If you’ve read more than a couple of my columns, you know what my answer will be.

In any event, you’ve already answered your own question: you listed several reasons for quitting and campaigning, and none at all for staying. The closest you came was mentioning that your parents are angry, and I do have some sympathy for their position. They probably worry about your future and feel that they have some stake in it after helping you with school, enduring the constant bass line from the basement that shakes the kitchen floor, etc. But, unless you are kidding yourself, you will get a new job with little trouble—which sounds right, since you are young and have STEM skills. In fact, your brief experience using those skills in a political campaign may have some resume value as showing versatility and a sense of civic duty.

Your folks may also think that you are being irresponsible. But it is not as if you are going off to lounge away your life among the lotus-eaters. You are trying to contribute to society at a crucial time—and not even for very long, since November is coming up. Go for it!

P.S. The magazine should already have emailed you a copy of this letter. Time is of the essence, and publication can take a while.

La Wally says:
If you are passionate about it, do it! Something good may come out of it. My only question is: will your parents kick you out of the basement, and if so, will you care?


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on October 21, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Four-Pinocchio Fiancée and Fox News at the Gym

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 24, 2018 by thwackDecember 17, 2018

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on August 24, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Prize Dilemma

Cleaver Magazine Posted on July 11, 2018 by thwackJuly 11, 2018

Dear June,

I recently attended two events, one involving my niece and one involving a colleague’s spouse.

The first event was a local gymnastics meet for middle schoolers—just an informal, rec center thing. In my niece’s cohort, there were seven kids competing. My niece, who had won First Place at the previous meet, was very excited and did what I thought was a very nice routine. Anyway, it turned out that there were five awards, for First through Fifth Place, which were announced in reverse order à la Miss America Pageant, with many pauses and lots of drama. By the time they got to First Place my niece was practically jumping up and down with anticipation. When another girl won I could see her blushing and trying to hold back tears. The presenter then announced a sixth award, for a specific apparatus—and my niece didn’t get that one, either. So the result was that she in effect was told that she was the worst person competing.  

By the time they got to First Place my niece was practically jumping up and down with anticipation. When another girl won I could see her blushing and trying to hold back tears. The presenter then announced a sixth award, for a specific apparatus—and my niece didn’t get that one, either. So the result was that she in effect was told that she was the worst person competing.

My brother is having trouble convincing her that she isn’t terrible and that gymnastics can still be fun. And he is really angry,

The second event I attended was quite different: a pre-degree awards ceremony for M.F.A. visual artists at a prestigious art school. In this case, there were 15 portfolios presented, which were supposed to distill the best of at least two years’ work. I know from what my colleague said that the candidates work really hard for months to put their portfolios together and that getting an award for one’s portfolio is very helpful for future employment and commissions and so on. And another thing: lots of different styles and media were represented, so the whole competition seemed to me like apples and oranges, although I am a writer so I am not quite sure how standards are set.

Anyway, there were three awards and two honorable mentions, and then the head of the program said that she wanted to let people know about five other people who were very high in the final ranking. Unlike my niece, my colleague’s wife did well (Second Place), so I didn’t have the same personal stake in the result but it still seemed unnecessary for there to be a public announcement basically saying that five of the students’ portfolios were in the bottom third.

This is not just a theoretical question for me. I teach creative writing and we do give out awards at the end of the year to a bunch of aspiring writers who are, if anything, more fragile than most middle-school athletes.

What do you think? Do you approve of the way the gymnastics meet and/or the portfolio awards were handled? This is not just a theoretical question for me. I teach creative writing and we do give out awards at the end of the year to a bunch of aspiring writers who are, if anything, more fragile than most middle-school athletes. And as for the gymnasts, I could use a little help deciding what to say to restore my niece’s self-confidence and prevent my brother from saying or doing something intemperate if this happens again.

—Upset Teacher in an Undisclosed Town


Dear UpUn,

Let’s start with the middle-schoolers. I disapprove.

One of my kids’ second-grade teachers had a rule about birthday parties: you could invite one or two kids or the whole class, but nothing in between. This way the children who weren’t invited might be disappointed at not being the birthday kid’s special friend but were much less likely to feel like pariahs. Even though your gymnasts are a little older, and were engaging in what was explicitly a skills competition, they are still very young and competing at an instructional, informal level. In such cases, there is no reason at all to set up an awards ceremony that may discourage kids from continuing with the sport and is almost guaranteed to cause needless disappointment and self-doubt. (Note: I am not talking about high-level, O.D.P. sports and the like. A lot of that seems crazy, too, but it would take inside knowledge for me to weigh in on the risks and benefits.)

Perhaps the turnout for your niece’s group was much lower than expected, and nobody anticipated that one little girl would effectively get the booby prize. But you’d think the responsible adults would have some sense and flexibility in a situation like that. For Pete’s sake, when you see that there are only seven kids competing, limit the awards to no more than three, or else (depending on how many certificates and dollar-store medals you have kicking around in your trunk) just give everybody an award, and maybe single out one or two girls for general excellence or stellar performance on the unequal bars. There are any number of ways to encourage the kids who excel without singling out the ones who do badly—or, in this case, who may have also done just fine in a subjective competition among a small group of children.

I realize that I am laying myself open to criticism as a fuzzy-headed, deep- and/ or nanny-state sympathizing bleeding heart who turns future rugged entrepreneurs into those dreaded “special snowflakes” of Internet rant fame, thereby accelerating the erosion of America’s greatness.

Those gymnasts are snowflakes. They are little kids, little individuals who need to build a reserve of self-confidence and self-esteem they can draw on in the future when they face serious challenges and unavoidable stumbling blocks. It’s true that setbacks, including failure and even humiliation, can build character. But they can also warp it. We are talking about youth sports here, not Marine boot camp.

But you know what? Those gymnasts are snowflakes. They are little kids, little individuals who need to build a reserve of self-confidence and self-esteem they can draw on in the future when they face serious challenges and unavoidable stumbling blocks. It’s true that setbacks, including failure and even humiliation, can build character. But they can also warp it. We are talking about youth sports here, not Marine boot camp. Manufacturing ways of embarrassing or disappointing children just isn’t worth the risk to their egos—or to their growing bodies, if they lose interest in sports.

Some other things we are not talking about here are The Bachelor, American Idol, or Chopped. There are no Nielson ratings to worry about, no advertisers who require spectacle and suspense. The gymnasts’ drawn out, reverse-order awards ceremony strikes me as silly, with just a touch of sadism—like teasing a dog with food (and perhaps posting a video of the dog’s adorable anxiety all over social media). Come to think of it, the dog tease actually makes more sense than the awards ceremony, since canine obedience does need to be reinforced, and since in most cases Old Blue eventually gets to eat the Pupperoni you’ve been making him balance on his snout for a doggie eternity. There’s no reason for the gymnastics award presenters to drag out the suspense, especially when a kid has reason to hope that she will come in first, not last!

As to how to restore your niece’s self-confidence, I suggest playing down the situation. It’s probably best not to mention the matter at all. Instead, talk to her about other areas where she excels, or have her do some gymnastics with you or for you and praise her—but focus on the fun part. If she raises the subject, I would just say that you thought she did great, and that is really weird the way one day your performance can get you first prize and the next time no prize. Try to be more so it-goes than we-wuz-robbed.

I would take a similar low-key tone with your brother. Above all, try to keep him from displaying any anger or disappointment around his daughter, which would only reinforce the very stupid notion that this one award, or any award, is what youth athletics is about. I wouldn’t actively discourage him from talking to the coach, or whoever runs these competitions if he wants to. People are always making life miserable for the many self-sacrificing coaches and officials in youth sports by challenging and second-guessing them, but in this case I think it might benefit the kids and the program if, without getting overwrought, your brother speaks to one of them and recommends against giving out almost, but not quite, as many prizes as there are contestants.

Just make sure he does so before, not during, an actual event, lest violence ensue. Believe me, this happens in youth sports. I still bear psychic scars from a travel soccer tournament held, appropriately, in Manassas, Virginia.

The portfolio awards are a bit different in that the contestants are adults who belong, or aspire to belong, to a profession where survival can depend on being able to learn from criticism and rebound from all manner of rejection.

True enough: but this 3-2-5-5-tier division is not criticism. It’s pure ranking, which provides the artists with no specifics, rationales, or advice for going forward. Besides, even if the rankings are completely accurate (whatever that means when evaluating student art), they are useless as a measure of absolute merit, since the pool of students as a whole could be terrific or terrible. And they are next-to-useless even as a measure of relative merit since there is no way to assess the gaps between any two individuals or subsets.

Okay, but what about the need for artists (and writers) to toughen themselves, to learn to accept rejection? If you are a non-celebrity in the arts or letters, you have to be thick-skinned and resilient. It can be a jungle out there or—worse—a lonely wasteland. But a portfolio awards ceremony may be one of the dumbest places to try to teach an artist grit and resilience. School should be an environment where artists and writers feel safe—not from criticism or even necessarily grading but from unexplained public pigeonholing.

School should be an environment where artists and writers feel safe—not from criticism or even necessarily grading but from unexplained public pigeonholing.

I agree with you about apples and oranges. Given the variety of artistic expression, and the amount of subjectivity in responses to art, I don’t see much sense in treating art like some kind of contest. If tradition or, for reasons that elude me, pedagogy requires that awards be given at an art school, I would keep the comparisons to a minimum for that reason alone. Three awards, fine. Honorable mentions, maybe, since they may have some resumé value. But why publicly announce the five next-best portfolios? It seems to me that, whatever benefit students might derive from being publicly praised as among the middle third is far outweighed by the effect on the bottom third. As with the little gymnasts, awards work best for everybody when they single out a few people for praise as opposed to publicly proclaiming everybody’s relative status. If you have to teach realism to certain students, there are better places, like conferences, individual critiques, and career counseling.

When you give out your own awards, I would keep your second tier private. Write them letters, if you like. Or think up specific awards for writers who are especially strong in certain areas: this would not only be encouraging, but also informative. But don’t publicly rank anybody as in or near the bottom without good reason, especially when they are already performing the brave and generous act of creative writing.

LA WALLY SAYS:
With the gymnasts, just tell the girl that that’s how it is. You win sometimes, and you lose sometimes, but don’t let it stop you from having fun. As for the portfolios: why go into that kind of detail about which artists you think are best and worst? You don’t make the art any better, and you will hurt people.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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: Charles Deluvio 🇵🇭🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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Published on July 11, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Wedding-Wrecking Sister and the Loose-Lipped Teacher

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 19, 2018 by thwackApril 19, 2018

Dear June,

I am getting married next month to a man I’ll call Ken, because that’s how perfect he looks. We have known each other slightly for years—we got our doctorates in the same rather esoteric branch of biology, so we corresponded from time to time, met at conferences or lectures, and so on. But we never really got to know each other until we ended up in the same city two years ago and were amazed by how much else we had in common, from writing poetry to owning French bulldogs.

We moved in together after a few months. He proposed a few weeks ago. We both hate big weddings and want to start trying for a kid right away so we decided on a very short engagement and a modest wedding.

Here is my problem. Ken is a really spectacular-looking guy, the kind who literally turns heads. As for me, I suppose I am the sort of person who can look good on a good day, to people who already love her, but that’s about it. It is no secret to anybody that I am totally outclassed in the looks department.  

Ken seems to truly respect me for inner qualities—brains, wit, opinions, kind heart. He has told me that the thinks I look great, and that anyway he does not care about looks very much. And it is true that he doesn’t seem at all vain about his own appearance. His clothes are appalling. He would much rather look through a microscope than into a mirror, and most of his poems are about either philosophy or nonflowering plants.

All good, right? But what worries me is something my sister said. She happened to mention the other day that she hardly knew any couples who fit Ken’s and my description (man much better looking than woman, does not seem to care about woman’s appearance very much). And that the ones she did know of always ended badly because the man turned out to be gay. And so now I am thinking about my first boyfriend, who was really a babe (I was the smart one in my class) and whom I adored because he seemed to take my opinions more seriously than other boys did, and didn’t care that I was carrying a few more pounds than the cheerleaders. He came out in college. And then there was this couple my parents knew for a long time and used to play bridge with. They were married for almost twenty years and had a similar story. People would comment on his absolute respect for his wife’s opinions and pride in her accomplishments, and how refreshing that was, especially since he was a way better catch because of his great looks…. Anyway, after they split up he started living with a man.

My fiancé is a lovely, thoughtful lover. But now I am thinking maybe too thoughtful?  I am all screwed up about this. I am worried that Ken and I might both be kidding ourselves. The wedding is in five weeks. Should I slow things down and rethink my relationship with my fiancé?  

—Freaked out in Framington

Dear Freaked,

No. But you might want to rethink your relationship with your sister. I have my doubts that she “just happened” to mention how rare it is to see male-female couples where the man is better looking than the woman, and how even in those rare cases the men are closeted gays. An observation like that, which is hurtful and tactless and insinuating and unsisterly on so many levels, usually takes some planning. Are you quite sure your sister isn’t resentful of your happiness? Jealous because you snagged an amiable looker who shares your interests? Predisposed to belittle your appearance and question your judgment? True, weddings can bring out all sorts of weirdness in otherwise bearable family members; but, if you ask me, and you sort of did, your sister has gone beyond wedding weirdness this time and into Iago territory.

Unless you firmly believe that clearing the air would make you feel better, I suggest that you never discuss this matter with your sister again.  Ever.  Try not to give her any more openings for sniping about your life with Ken. Cut her off the minute she tries. And take her general attitude, and any other destructive remarks she “happens” to make, with a mountain of salt.

As to whether there is any merit in what your sister said, I certainly hope not!  I like to think that there are guys out there, even gorgeous ones, who can manage to sustain a healthy, many-faceted heterosexual relationship with women who may score a bit below them in the conventional physical attractiveness category. I have actually known a few such men—which, if we are talking about counterexamples to disprove a general statement, is actually relevant and probative. By contrast, you really can’t use anecdotal evidence to prove a blanket observation, and it’s hard to think of anything more anecdotal than the instances your poor worried mind dredged up. For one thing, there are only two of them. And they are both pretty feeble. It is hard to learn anything valuable about mature adult sexuality from your experience with a closeted and probably tortured high-school boyfriend—except to realize that it may have left you with some insecurities about your own attractiveness and made you grist for Sis’s mill. As for your parents’ friends’ situation, who’s to say what happened there?  Maybe they moved on for reasons unrelated to looks or sexuality. Maybe he was a monogamous bisexual and they fought over money. Who knows? And who cares, really? It is self-indulgent even to speculate about an isolated case.

And your sister’s evidence is worse than anecdotal, since she never actually related any anecdotes. It is not even evidence.

Listen: Do you trust Ken? Is the sex mutually enjoyable? If so, your current doubts are probably just wedding jitters, exacerbated by your sister’s insinuations. Even assuming that Ken is really a ten to your five—which I do not, by the way: you sound like a self-deprecating soul, with plenty of help from your sister—it is far more likely, and far less insulting to men, gay people, and basic humanism, that he is unaware of or uninterested in this disparity than that he is living an elaborate lie. You say that he does not seem to care much about conventional good looks, and your portrait of him squares with that: anybody who writes poems about ferns and mosses and dresses “appallingly” probably doesn’t devote a lot of thought to whether his beloved could match his hotness score in a poll of People and Vanity Fair readers. Nothing you have written gives me any reason to doubt that Ken loves you, likes what you look like, and probably likes several of your other qualities even more. That makes you lucky.

It makes me sad, though, that you are questioning your own attractiveness, and wondering —even for a moment—whether Ken’s “thoughtfulness” as a lover means he might be gay. And it worries me that you are so susceptible to your sister’s poison. Nothing you’ve written raises any questions about Ken’s sexuality or your mutual love and respect.  Believe in yourself, and trust your beloved.

Unless you have other grave doubts or conflicts you haven’t told me about, I see no reason to postpone your wedding. I am sure you will be a beautiful bride, more than beautiful enough for your Ken, who I am sure would rather have you than Barbie (much less another Ken) any day. I wish I could be there, bearing gifts. Perhaps some exquisite liverworts.

La Wally says:
He doesn’t sound gay to me. And even if he does come out some day, by then you would probably already have a couple of smart, good-looking kids with a responsible dad. So go for it. 

By the way, that sister is ugly where it counts. 


Dear June,

Zeb, a guy who works at my office, just gave notice because he got a job teaching art at a private school. Today when we were all sitting around after our monthly all -staff meeting—which is one of the only times I’ve ever seen him, since he’s in another department and building—somebody asked him about the school. After telling people where it is, how many kids go there, and so forth, he summed it up as “a fancy school for spoiled fucked-up rich kids.”  

I kept my peace, but what I would have liked to say is that the school is not all that fancy, and its students are not all rich or “spoiled” or “fucked up.” I know this because my son goes there and I work hard to pay for it. David, who is dyslexic and has a mild attention deficit disorder, is a delightful, generous kid, well-adjusted and less entitled and materialistic than most middle-class American teens I have come across. Of his classmates, some have learning or emotional challenges, some are brilliant and unconventional, and some just seem to be unremarkable kids whose siblings go to the school, or whose parents like its philosophy.

I am angry at Zeb’s attitude and the way he expressed it. And I wonder how good an art teacher he can be if he feels that way about his students. But I hate to mess up his life and, frankly, I don’t need any more unpleasantness in my own life right now. What should I do?

—Miffed in Massachusetts

Dear Miffed,

You need to tell the school administration what you heard. Anybody who feels the way Zeb says he does about the school and its students should not be teaching there.

I suppose it’s possible that he didn’t really mean what he said. Maybe he had just had a dreadful encounter with a snooty trustee. Maybe he knew one of your fellow staffers’ kids had been rejected by the school, or couldn’t afford it, and was trying to make them feel better. Maybe he was just having a really bad day and regretting his choice to change jobs. Or maybe he is immature and tone deaf, and was trying to sound cool. None of these scenarios, or any others I could come up with, seems very likely, though. At the very least, Zeb must have felt that there was some truth in what he said, or it would never have occurred to him to say it.

Besides, no matter what his motivation, Zeb publicly disparaged the school and its students at what sounds like a fairly large meeting. This itself is a disservice to the kids and, of course, terrible P.R. for the institution. If you support the school, as I assume you must, I believe that you should alert the people who run it.

I sympathize with your not wanting to be “mean” or to be responsible for putting another person’s job in jeopardy. But you have to balance this against your duty to speak out against a man who may cause emotional harm to your child and his schoolmates, and who seems to have no scruples about tarnishing the school’s reputation. There’s no question that the welfare of these children (some of whom attend the school precisely because they are fragile) outweighs the job prospects of a guy who, at best, made a very stupid mistake by dissing them and, at worst, really does hold them in contempt. They are innocent kids, and one of them is your kid. He is an adult who signed on to help them learn and grow, and he messed up.

Of course, it is easy for me to preach from a safe distance about your duty to speak up. You are right: doing so may indeed lead to some “unpleasantness.”  This is the kind of situation where a bottle of long-acting, incident-specific emotional anesthetic capsules would come in handy. Take one and it would be a cinch to talk to your headmaster. Pop a few more and it you would have no problem dealing with Zeb if he lost his job and knew you were the reason, or even—heaven forfend!—if he talked his way into staying on (probation, maybe?) and ended up teaching your son and taking out his anger at you on him. It wouldn’t bother you at all if Zeb’s old friends at your office were onto you and gave you the stink eye. In fact, if the headmaster let Zeb go and didn’t tell him why, you would take Zeb out to lunch and tell him yourself, for his betterment and in the spirit of transparency.

But alas.

In this imperfect world, where doing the right thing can make us squirm and tremble and lose sleep —and that’s on days when we’re not second-guessing ourselves—it makes sense to decide how much “unpleasantness” we can put up with, and try to arrange life accordingly. As I have said, I don’t think doing nothing is an option in this case, since the welfare of children is involved. But nobody is required to be an absolute moral heroine; and speaking directly to Zeb (the lunch option) might require that level of heroism if you are an introvert or a conflict-avoider.

In fact, I don’t see any shame in trying to insulate yourself from Zeb as much as possible. If, as I hope and expect, the school decides to retract its offer, ask the school if there is a way to do so on some pretext that protects you and avoids a confrontation with Zeb. The school authorities might actually prefer this course, depending upon various legalities (has a contract been signed?) and their view of how best to minimize negative publicity. On the other hand, they may feel obligated to tell Zeb the real reason for letting him go, and perhaps to hear his side of the story before taking any final action. If so, ask them not to mention you by name.

But they may do so anyway and, even if they don’t, Zeb may be able to guess your identity by running through the people who attended that fateful staff meeting. (Of course, you may be safe if he has badmouthed the school so often that he never manages to zero in on that one meeting!)  If Zeb does find out, and confronts you somehow or otherwise makes life difficult for you, I hope you’ll be able to console yourself by remembering that you did what you thought was right for your son and his schoolmates. Since virtue is rarely its own reward, I think you should further console yourself with a nice bottle of wine or mani-pedi or mental-health day playing hooky with your son, whatever works.

Being good can be a drag. With any luck, though, you’ll come through this without having to deal with any recriminations from Zeb because you will never come in contact with him again, at your son’s school or anywhere else. As for Zeb, let’s imagine him enjoying a long and happy career working with machines.

La Wally’s response:
I partly disagree. I would start by talking to Zeb and just tell him what I wrote in this letter. He needs to know so he can clean up his act. If I still didn’t feel good about Zeb teaching my child, I would let the school know.  


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

 

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

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Published on April 19, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Snarky Scale-Salesman and the Rowdy Gym Rats

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 24, 2018 by thwackApril 19, 2018

Dear June, 

So my boyfriend and I go to the home-improvement store to buy a scale and I go to the nearest help kiosk or whatever you call it and ask one of the sales associates for advice. Specifically, I am wondering how reliable the various digital scales are because mine totally lost its accuracy after a year, even when I changed the battery. The associate, a guy maybe 18 or 19, says “Are you sure the problem’s with the scale?” Then—my boyfriend denies this, but I saw it—the guy looks over at my boyfriend and sort of rolls his eyes at him, man to man.

I say, “Thanks, that’s helpful,” and march out of the store, my boyfriend hurrying after me.

My boyfriend tells me that it was stupid of me to storm out like that. He says that the kid was just trying to make a joke, and that anyway this store probably has the best prices, so that by leaving I was just hurting myself. What do you think? 

—Dieting in Dover

Dear Dido,

I’m not sure what the kid was after. He may have thought he was making a little joke all three of you would find funny. He may have actually believed you could have been mistaken about the scale, and wanted to be helpful and possibly save you some money. Or he may have known perfectly well that he would offend you. (My money is on that last one.) But it doesn’t really matter. Clueless, condescending, or outright offensive—whichever he was, there is no reason you had to put up with him if you didn’t want to.

But let’s play devil’s advocate for a minute and run through the best arguments I can think of for making light of the kid’s conduct, and staying in the store.

One is that you may have offended the salesperson, or hurt his feelings when you turned and left. This is unlikely; I suspect that he just shrugged his shoulders and moved on. And even if he did take offense, it is probably good for him to get a little negative reinforcement when he makes questionable and probably sexist jokes.

Two is that, if you had stayed around, you might have found someone who would actually help you. This strikes me as even less likely; I have hardly ever encountered anybody in big stores who knows, or much cares, about small appliances—if a scale even rises to the level of an appliance.

Three is your boyfriend’s point that the store probably has the best prices. I have no idea whether this is true but, even if it is, getting the best price on a product becomes much less attractive when you are not sure whether it’s a good product. If the staff at a brick-and-mortar store can’t or won’t help you weigh the merits of different scales, and if shopping there is not a pleasant experience, it makes more sense to shop online, where you can look for rock-bottom prices and probably read customer and expert reviews.

Or, if you know of any, you could go to a store where the prices may be a bit higher, but the staff is knowledgeable and helpful, or at least obliging and inoffensive. I am all for going to real physical stores whenever possible, to help the local economy and increase the amount of eye contact among humans. In fact, I am willing to pay a little more to even when I know exactly what I want, like a specific book, to help keep local shops open—but only when the store offers good service or otherwise contributes to the community.

So no, I don’t think you were “stupid,” and I certainly hope that your boyfriend doesn’t make a habit of using that word to characterize your behavior. His doing so, and his making light of a remark that upset you, do not redound to his credit. Nor does his apparent siding with a loutish bro he’d never set eyes on before instead of supporting you. A bathroom scale may not be that big a deal. (Okay, I admit that it can be—this is where I sort of roll my eyes at you, woman to woman.) Being sensitive to your partner is a huge deal, though. The incident you write about is fairly minor. But if your boyfriend’s behavior at the home-improvement store strikes you as typical, you might want to sit him down and have a chat. You might even want to think about whether he is right for you. Look back on the way he has treated you, and see if the scales fall from your eyes.

La Wally says:
If she had a do-over, I’d tell her to check out the different scales at the store and see if anybody else could help her, then look up ratings and prices on her phone while still at the store. Use that info to buy the scale there, or not. Then she can go back and tell that first salesperson he was out of line, if she still wants to.

As for the boyfriend, I’m not sure he acted all that badly. I would need to know more. Besides, she didn’t ask about that.


Dear June,

I love the place where I go to swim four or five times a week. Going there takes a big bite out of my budget and uses up about half of my free time, but it has been worth it. Swimming is the only exercise I like. The pool is wonderful—bright, clean, very big, not too crowded. 

I have this routine where I swim laps, then read a magazine while I soak in the hot tub for twenty minutes or so, then shower and dry my hair and so on and drive to my home office, or to the college where I teach part-time. This routine used to leave me feeling calm and invigorated. But then this group of ladies started showing up. According to the people at the desk, at least some of them belong to church or community group, which brings them in a van. A bunch of them are almost always there at the same times I am.

I have several minor problems with these women, mostly because they seem to have zero sense of personal space and are forever doing stuff like sitting two inches from me when there is plenty of room elsewhere, jumping under the hairdryer I was in the middle of using when I step away to get some more gel, and so on. But I can live with that. What’s really making me crazy is that they talk a lot, usually at the top of their voices. It often sounds as if they are yelling out some warning, or crying for help, or having some huge fight. Since I don’t understand a single word of the language they are speaking, or should I say screaming, there is no way for me to filter what they say. I try to block them out entirely, but it never works. What can I do?

—Rattled in Raritan

Dear Rattled,

I sympathize with you—more than I should, probably: I have missed the artistry, and sometimes even the plot, of many movies, and enjoyed some concerts less than I might have, due to obsessing about somebody’s popcorn or loud whispers or crinkling program. And even though the swim club experience doesn’t depend on sound in the same way, I can imagine how jarring it is to be soaking in a hot tub and hear someone shouting what, to a non-Loud-Lady-Language speaker, sounds just like a tsunami alert; or to be in the locker room standing on one naked leg, trying to squeeze yourself into a damp racing suit, and lose your balance when some unintelligible person six inches behind you shouts what could very well mean “They got me!” or “Duck!” or “Rabid dog!” or “Man the torpedoes!” or “You talkin’ to ME?”

However, even though I agree that your problem is real, it may be hard to solve—if by “solve” we mean getting the ladies to change their behavior and quiet down. You could try talking to the management, but I am not sure how much help they can or will provide. This probably depends on the nature of the facility. If it is fancy, smallish, expensive, and spa-like, somebody might be willing to talk to the ladies or their sponsoring group and try to get them to dial it down a few decibels; but even if management does try, it may be hard to make the Loud Ladies realize how much noise they are making. After all, they apparently sound just fine to one another. And if the facility is more like a Y, or a local community center, or a sports gym, you may have trouble getting anyone to care about some women who are just one noisy group among a diverse and rowdy collection of aging jocks, high-school swim teams, youth basketball players, Silver Sneakers seniors, and others who come and go throughout the week (although not, I hope, at the same times you do).

Or you could try talking to the Loud Ladies yourself. I know people who would have no trouble asking your ladies to be quieter, even if doing so meant using gestures indicating loudness, headache, keeping it down, and so on if necessary (although I would bet that, unless they are all recent arrivals, some of your ladies must know basic English). But I am not one of those people and would want to know the ladies better before I risked offending them and making matters worse. You may be made of sterner stuff. If so, be my guest…but remember that you will, in effect, be telling them that something they do habitually and naturally is annoying and rude.

If quieting the ladies down doesn’t work out—which I predict—it might help to change your response to them. How about if you try to develop some sympathy or fellow feeling for them? Think about what a fine thing it is that they get to enjoy one another’s company. Ponder the likelihood that, where talking unbelievably loudly is concerned, they really cannot help themselves. Perhaps their decibel level has something to do with their language itself, or their culture. (I do not mean to stereotype any particular language or ethnic group here. These ladies may just comprise one tiny, abnormally loud subculture of their own. And of course I have absolutely no idea what their language, country of origin, etc., actually are.

You might even try establishing some sort of relationship with them, perhaps by admiring this woman’s suit or that woman’s brush. Or by pointing out that the water in the pool has been really cold lately, while hugging your arms and going “brrr.” Or by picking a moment to leave the club when you can hold the door for the ladies and smile at them they file out to the van. Getting to know them better won’t make them any quieter, but it might make their noise less irritating.

And don’t forget about earplugs. They won’t look out of place at the pool, and even if they don’t totally block the ladies’ voices, they will probably lower the decibel levels enough to make their conversations sound like ordinary chitchat about goggles and grandchildren, not desperate pleas and urgent warnings.

La Wally says:
If the women are really that loud, do complain to the management. They will not want to lose customers. But you will probably be happier if you are not so sensitive. I would work on that.

 


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on March 24, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Blabbermouth Sister and the Self-Centered Bestie

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 25, 2018 by thwackFebruary 25, 2018

Dear June,

I love my sister “Melissa,” but she has always been really bad at keeping secrets. Last week my boyfriend “Teddy” and I finally got officially engaged. We had been leading up to it for months and months, and there was a fair amount of drama along the way. During it all Melissa was my closest confidante and a great help to me and my fiancé, so I decided to tell her first, but I also told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to tell anyone, by which I meant anyone.

She must have told her husband “Brad” within minutes after I left her house, and he must have called his parents two minutes later, and they must have called my parents about a nanosecond after that, because Mom called my mobile phone twice before I’d even made it across town to my own place. I called back the minute I parked, and Mom and Dad were both thrilled, although I could tell Mom was hurt that my mother-in-law found out before she did. I told Mom that Melissa wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, even Brad, and that I had been hurrying to my place to Skype both sets of parents and make the announcement over a bottle of champagne, with Teddy by my side, when Melissa set the whole phone chain in motion. I reminded Mom that I’d promised never to call her while I was driving, and promised that if I ever got pregnant I would certainly let her know before I told my loose-lipped big sister. She seemed pretty much fine after that, but my big announcement was hardly the Hallmark moment I’d been looking forward to.

When I called Melissa to chew her out, she actually got angry with me, saying, among other things, that I had put her in a terrible position by trying to force her to keep secrets from her husband. She also said that if I really wanted to blame anybody other than myself, the fault was Brad’s, and maybe his parents,’ because everybody knows people tell their spouses everything but he had no reason to go blabbing to his parents, and they certainly had no reason to call ours, although they probably thought ours knew already, because why wouldn’t I have told them?

I let the matter drop at that point, mostly because she was giving me a headache. Teddy and I called a few of our friends and ended up drinking our champagne with them in what turned out to be a memorable evening. But I am still mad at Melissa, partly for being a blabbermouth but mostly for acting like I was an idiot to think I could confide in her and for not taking any responsibility herself. Do you agree with me that Melissa is the bad guy here? 

—Teed Off in Teaneck

Dear T.O.,

“Bad guy” is a bit strong. But I understand why her behavior annoyed and disappointed you. I agree with you that it was wrong of your sister to run and tell her husband. Unlike Melissa, I don’t believe that spouses do or should “tell each other everything”—everything relevant and important to the marriage, perhaps, but not someone else’s temporary secret about a happy event. I suppose one could argue that, given how close your family seems to be, your becoming engaged is relevant and important to your brother-in-law; but, even if so, the news is hardly urgent. Melissa might have waited a few days so you and Teddy could have the joy of telling the news yourselves.

I can also certainly see why you would be angry at Melissa’s response when you called her. Few things are more infuriating than when somebody discounts or even resents you for not anticipating their bad behavior. It was also less than heroic for her to pass the buck to her husband and in-laws.

But it sounds as if no real harm was done: your mother has been mollified, and you and your fiancé had an evening that sounds like at least as much fun as Skyping the folks. As long as Melissa stops actually accusing you of wrongdoing, I would let the matter drop and do what you can to cool down—not because Melissa behaved reasonably, but because I do not think staying mad at her would do anybody any good. It sounds as if Melissa was acting totally in character when she blabbed; I doubt whether your anger would make her any more likely to keep future secrets. As for the present: You have just entered what I hope will be a very happy time in your life. It will also very probably be a hectic one, as you plan your wedding. Staying on good terms with your sister is especially important now. So is keeping a sense of humor.

Don’t mention this to Melissa—concede nothing!—but I do have to wonder why you told your sister and relied on her discretion when you knew she “has always been really bad at keeping secrets.” (I also wonder whether you gave her the option not to hear your news, as in “If I tell you something, will you promise to keep it secret?” as opposed to “We’re engaged! Keep it secret.” But perhaps this is too fine a point to raise in a familial and, frankly, low-stakes situation like his one.) I assume that joy and sisterly affection overcame your own discretion, which is actually rather sweet. Try, if you can, to see the sweet and excited-for-you, as opposed to the gossipy and meddling, side of Melissa’s spilling the beans.

This is not to say you should ever trust her to keep a secret. Be careful what you tell Melissa, and be careful not to tell her you are being careful. Sometimes we just have to live with our loved ones’ limitations.

La Wally’s response:
I think that Melissa is reacting that way because she knows she was wrong. How can Melissa be mad at T.O. for trusting her?

It’s over now. But, moving on, if T.O. ever tells Melissa a secret she should be even clearer before she tells it that it cannot be repeated. This probably will not work.

P.S. If T.O. wanted to have some fun, she could tell Melissa some secrets that aren’t true and see where they go.


Dear June,

I am a reserved and, I am afraid, timid woman. Despite having grown up in an enlightened family and then gone to a college where people would have been very supportive, I did not come out to anybody as bisexual until I was 23, when I had my first experience, with the woman who is now my girlfriend. My finally coming out hasn’t created any real problems with anybody I’m close to, with one exception—who, unfortunately, is (or was) my best friend “Gaby.” She’s straight, so I never thought this could possibly be an issue, but it really seems to bother her that I’ve never had any romantic or sexual interest in her!  

I thought it was weird that she brought the matter up. In fact, it never occurred to me that she would. But one of the first things she asked me after I came out to her was whether I had ever wanted to open up about my “feelings” for her. If I had had any time to think, I would probably have figured out some way to wriggle out of answering her, but she took me by surprise and I just blurted out: “Good Lord, no! I never thought of you that way.” I am afraid I actually laughed. She said: “Thank God for that!” and laughed along with me. But after that her manner seemed kind of cool off and on for weeks, until one day she asked me what was wrong with her that I had no interest in her, even though we knew each other so well and had been through so much together.

Maybe I should have been more careful about bruising her ego. I could have told her that I was lucky never to be attracted to straight women. Probably some defense mechanism built into my sexuality, I could have said. Or I could have told her that she was like a sister to me, which triggered an incest taboo. But I was exasperated. So I told her the truth, which is that I had no idea why, but that for some reason she did not turn me on, and that for the life of me I could not see why this was not a good thing.  

Since then—it has been about a month —we have done all the kinds of things we usually do together, like calling each other every day or so and having coffee twice a week and pizza most Wednesday nights. But she seems to have some sort of chip on her shoulder, as if I broke up with her or rejected her or something. This seems crazy to me, and I have no clue what to do about it. Any advice?  

—Surprised in Southbury

Dear SiS,

I’m surprised, too. I do understand, sort of, that Gaby might have some idle curiosity about whether your attraction to women might have included her somewhere along the way. We all have our vain and narcissistic moments. What I find surprising is that she would simply assume that you had “feelings” for her: either she thinks bi people are less selective than straight people, and desire almost anyone they are otherwise close to, which strikes me as seriously insulting, or she thinks (or thought, until you shot her down) that she, in particular, would be hard to resist, which is not the sort of thing you mention even if you are conceited enough to believe it. What I find downright astonishing is that she would not only think you were bound to have these feelings, but would also expect you to talk to her about them on demand, during what I assume was already a complicated time in your life.

And what on earth were you supposed to say if you were attracted to Gaby? If she is indeed straight, it seems both unkind and breathtakingly self-centered of her to ask you to open up to her about desires she will never reciprocate. Given that she seems to have taken offense at your not being attracted to her, the questions she asked you had no acceptable answer —except, perhaps, for one of those explanations (defense mechanism, incest taboo) you wish you’d had time to consider.

Of course, you have no duty to explain anything in this situation. Gaby put you on the spot, twice, and you gave her two truthful answers —which, in terms of strict morality and entitlements, was already more than you needed to do: you had every right not to answer her intrusive questions at all. But, as I keep saying in these columns (the process has actually been a learning experience for me), strict ethics is often the easy part of the answer to life’s questions. In your case and many others, the hard parts are deciding what you want and then trying to figure out how to achieve it with minimal drama and without compromising your dignity or principles.

It sounds to me that what you want is to maintain your close friendship with Gaby, but to have her stop skulking around like a woman scorned.

She may stop on her own if the two of you just stick to your reassuring routines. As a self-described reserved and timid person, you might want to keep doing what you’re doing for another month or two, eating pizza and drinking coffee and chatting on the phone without alluding to the curious incident of the nonexistent rejection. Her hurt, or whatever it is, may run its natural course. She may even read something, or talk to some third person, and start to see reason.

If that doesn’t work, or if you just decide at any point that it is time to clear the air, by all means talk to her —but, before you do, take some time to think about why she has been so clueless (at best) and how you can smooth things over without actually lying to her or saying anything that implies an apology or excuse.

Here are some questions worth considering. Is Gaby (rightly or wrongly) concerned about her attractiveness in general? Has her romantic and sexual life been unsatisfying? If so, perhaps her behavior toward you is part of this larger insecurity—as in: “I’m so unappealing that I am unattractive even to even my best friend, who I now know is drawn to at least some people of our gender.”

Gaby’s assuming that you would have “feelings” for her, and especially her being hurt and offended when you turned out not to, may also stem, at least in part, from her attachment for you. At some level, maybe conscious or maybe more visceral, she may have felt that, since you two are bffs and all, and you are so pretty and smart and charming, she would of course be attracted to you if she were gay or bisexual, and that she would expect you to feel the same way. Or might she even feel some non-hypothetical attraction to you? Her odd behavior hints only weakly at this possibility —which, in any event, would be treacherous and probably cruel to mention given your lack of attraction to her. But it would explain some of her hurt.

And even if Gaby has never felt the slightest frisson of sensuality in your presence, never had even the subtlest crush on you, she may still feel rejected or displaced by your new sexuality—and your girlfriend. Until now she has never had to compete with another woman in quite the same way for your time, attention, and intimacy. This may be part of the reason for that chip on Gaby’s shoulder, and your dismissing and, at one point, laughing at the idea that Gaby might have what it takes to fill your new lover’s role may have felt like adding insult to injury.

Not that there has been any insult on your part —except for a completely excusable lack of superhuman tact. No injury, either: it sounds as if you and Gaby are doing the same sorts of things and communicating just as often as before your new love interest came along. No matter how we try to explain it, Gaby’s response was self-centered and tone-deaf. But it almost never hurts to try to understand our loved ones’ motives when they behave badly. Doing so can lessen our own hurt and free us from corrosive anger, along with helping us figure out how to deal with the bad actor in question —which latter, you will recall, is the quest I set out on a few paragraphs back.

If you decide it is time to talk, I would bear in mind that Gaby may have been a seriously second-rate friend—self-absorbed, insulting, ignorant, and an annoying mixture of conceited and neurotically insecure—when dealing with your coming out, but that she may also be terrified of losing her special closeness with you to someone who can be both your woman friend and your girlfriend. I would tell (or write) her something like: “I’ve been thinking about that time you asked me whether there was anything wrong with you because I don’t think about you sexually. You know how interesting and smart and fun and beautiful I think you are. I am not sure why, maybe because you have been my close friend for so long, but even though you are such a lovely person I am somehow insulated from those feelings where you’re concerned. I am really grateful for that because I know that I can tell you anything, and that we can be friends forever without any awkwardness or one-sidedness. It has been hard for me to come out as bi, and I know we’ve had one or two difficult moments. I will feel so much comfortable if we declare this subject closed and move on. [Optional: Love you.]”

If I do say so myself, that sounds like an eminently reasonable response to Gaby’s weirdness. Firm, yet kind, almost saintly. Indeed, I would understand if you wanted to dial the goodness down a notch. But saintliness can be quite effective against resentment and passive aggression.

I hope that you and Gaby work things out. I also hope that she broadens her perspectives on friendship and sexuality. Do you remember when the dashing Henry Crawford proposed to the timid and reserved Fanny Price in Mansfield Park? Of course you do. But let me explain to those poor unfortunates whose Jane Austen never went beyond Pride and Prejudice that Fanny refused Crawford and that nobody understood why she could not love him. When told that she would have to convince her aunts that she had not lost her senses, Fanny said: “I should have thought…that every woman must have felt the possibility of a man’s not being approved, not being loved by someone of her sex, at least, let him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain, that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.” The principle is the same here: nobody, however agreeable, must be acceptable as a love interest to every friend who happens to come out as bi.

Well, essentially the same. Good luck, and congratulations on overcoming your reserve and timidity.

La Wally’s response:
If they are such close friends, I would have SiS talk to Gaby one more time and explain two things. One: that this is not all about her. Two: that being bisexual does not mean you are attracted to everybody of your own gender. Maybe Gaby is acting so weird because she is attracted to SiS. But even if she is, don’t go there!


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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: Kristina Flour on Unsplash 

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Published on February 25, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Problematically Perfect Family and Standing Your Ground on the Bus

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 1, 2018 by thwackJanuary 6, 2019

Dear June,

“Jack” and I have been dating for over two years now. We’re planning to move in together when my lease runs out in June, and are starting to talk in very general terms about settling in for the long run.  

I think he loves me, but I have started to worry that he loves me more for my family than for myself. There are five of us: Mom, Dad, Nonie, Jack, and me. Except for Nonie, my kid sister who is away at college, we all live within a few miles of one another. My parents still live in the family home, which is a great place—the house all the neighborhood kids always wanted to hang out in, not just because it is very comfortable and has a pool and a basement with a ping-pong table and other great kid amenities, but also because of my parents, who are very charismatic. Several of my friends have told me that they wished they had a dad like mine, and one even half-seriously confessed to having a crush on him. As for my mom, at least three of my high school and college boyfriends liked to stay up late sitting at the kitchen table with her, baring their young souls over a carafe of coffee or red wine, as age-appropriate. And my big brother Jack is and always has been both cool and friendly, a sensitive golden-boy jock. A good brother, I might add, and always willing—maybe too willing in this case—to spend time with anybody I bring home.  

Jack has clearly fallen under my family’s spell. There were days last summer when we spent more time at their place than mine or his, almost always at his instigation, “because of the pool.” He and Jack play pickup basketball and drink beer every Thursday. Jack never lets us miss Sunday dinners with my folks, a tradition that I like, but that that used to be a lot looser before he came along. He and my mom, who’s a Political Science professor, talk shop on the phone at least once a week. My dad, who teaches film, must always be consulted before we ever see one, in theaters or at home, and as often as not this leads to our all watching together

Don’t get me wrong. I love my family, and love being with them—almost as much as Jack does! If I were sure Jack loved me and valued my company in my own right, things would be fine. But I find myself feeling less like Jack’s life companion and more like a minor cog in the engine that is my family. (In case it matters, Jack’s own family is concentrated in a city about 90 miles away. His feelings for them seem dutiful and respectful, but not overly fond. What little I have seen of them makes me understand his coolness. They are a close-minded, judgmental, whiny, boring bunch if ever I saw one.) 

So what do I do? Do I even have a problem here? How can I be sure of Jack?

—Incidental in Indiana

Dear Double Eye,

People who are rich, famous, gorgeous, talented, powerful, heirs to an apartment in Paris, season-ticket holders, or otherwise especially blessed often ask themselves your basic question: Am I loved for myself, or for this attribute that has nothing to do with who I really am? And it can be a hard question to answer because answering it depends on knowing what is in your lover’s heart. Jack’s behavior sounds totally consistent with his truly loving you. His growing affection for your family—while perhaps a bit excessive and, I suspect, partly the result of some need to fill the emptiness created by his own relatives—may be serving only to enrich and deepen his feelings for you. But it is also remotely possible that his affection for your family is distracting him from his feelings for you, or even creating some vicious cycle where, the more he sees your family and enjoys their company, the less time and love he has for you, and so on.

From the way you describe him in your letter, my guess is that Jack does love you for yourself and that he sees you and your family as mutually enhancing one another. What is love, if not being thoughtful and supportive, planning together for the future, and having great sex? That said, he does seem to be going a bit overboard, so—especially given your history with all those early pals and boyfriends—I can see why you are in need of reassurance. Here are a few things you can ask, or do, to help see into his soul, and maybe your own.

The first question to explore is whether his feelings for you or his desire to be in your company, seem to have changed in any way as he has gotten so caught up in being with your family. Does he treat you any differently now when you are alone together? Does he ignore you when you and your folks end up watching movies together? Do those Thursdays take away from time you used to reserve for each other? If you don’t see any major change, what you might have here is a growing pie, or perhaps I mean burgeoning heart, situation, where Jack loves you for yourself, loves Jack for himself, etc., with a heart that has expanded in order to accommodate his new sort-of family.

Have you talked to Jack about this? Is he even aware that his enthusiasm for your family might be anything other than pleasing to you? If he has no idea, you might find that alerting him to the issue will go a long way toward resolving it. But I would tread lightly. Maybe say “Sometimes I think you just love me for my family,” but say it with a smile, while arriving home with burritos or taking a shower together. Or let him know, if he doesn’t already, that you’d really just as soon skip Sunday dinner every third week or so to have time alone with him, or with him and some of your other friends.

No matter what, if anything, you say to Jack about your worries, I strongly suggest that you devise ways to spend more time alone with him, whether at home by the fire (or equivalent), out for a romantic dinner, or attending events together. Are there entertainers or activities you and Jack like but your parents can’t stand? Kendrick Lamar? Karaoke bars? Rock climbing? If your parents are as hip as they sound, these may be hard to find, but I’m sure you can manage if you put your mind to it. Spending time alone with Jack—or with Jack and people other than your family—may be the best way both to test and to strengthen the depth of his feelings for you when your family is not part of the equation.

Have you considered talking to your brother or one of your parents, and perhaps even enlisting their aid? I do not know your family, of course, and have no idea how they would react. But perhaps your brother could run some interference if, say, you want to plan a weekend alone. I am sure he would understand. Or you could tell your mother that you’re planning a special romantic movie night with Jack and ask her to find some way to discourage your dad from making it a foursome.

If you can swing it, how about a long trip abroad, just the two of you? Foreign travel as a couple can cement a relationship—and, if not, at least it will be informative.

Forgive me, since I am not sure you asked for this particular advice, but I believe that you should also consider your own feelings about your family, and whether you may be projecting any doubts or resentment about them onto Jack. Do you ever wonder whether they really value you for yourself? Does it bother you that they devote so much attention to Jack when they could be spending time with you, or at least allowing Jack to give you his full attention? Does it annoy you that they seem to need to cast these spells, as you call them? Do you worry that you’re less charismatic than the rest of your family, or that your family believes that you are? Do you believe that being around them makes you suffer by comparison? It would be worth talking to a counselor if you have any such concerns.

If you resolve, or don’t think you have, any issues with your own family; if you and Jack make more time to be alone together, and seem to do fine when you are; and if you do not think that his love for you has actually diminished in any way because of his enthusiasm for your family, I do not see his fondness for them as posing a serious threat. Even if his feelings for your family do enhance his feelings for you, he probably sees your family as icing on the cake. And if his affection and admiration for you and for your family do get tangled up every so often, I would not give it too much thought. After all, your family played a large part in your becoming who you are. Besides, there are worse things than having a potential life partner who loves being part of your extended family, especially if you all continue to live near one another. If you and Jack stay together and have kids, there will be no problem getting him to take them over to the family pool. And as your parents grow older and, perhaps, less powerful and charismatic, he will be there to help you take care of them. It could all work out.

La Wally’s Response: I think she just needs to talk to him. It strikes me as odd that she is overthinking this. This seems to me the opposite of a problem. Imagine how much worse it would be if they didn’t all love each other.

Dear June,

Last week I was riding home from work on a crowded bus, hanging onto a strap for dear life and feeling kind of tired, when a young man stood up and gave me his seat. Surprised, I responded automatically by sitting down and thanking him. “It’s what any young person should do,” he said, smiling and gesturing with his head and eyes toward a sign that said something like: “Always be courteous and offer your seat to disabled or elderly riders.” I’m clearly not disabled, June, and I just turned 48. I went home and cried. 

Do you have any advice on how to handle this? What should I do if somebody offers me a seat again? Next thing you know, boy scouts are going to be dragging me across the street.  

—Prematurely Gray in Punta Gorda

Dear Preemie,

Don’t read too much into what happened. Bear in mind that many young people define “old” at least as broadly and loosely as older people define “young.” The guy who offered you his seat probably noticed only your tired posture, the fact that you are not in your first youth, and perhaps your prematurely gray hair, and lumped you into a broad category that probably includes everybody from his feeble great-grandma to the woman, now 37, who taught him Freshman English.

Consider also that, although 48 is in no way old for most purposes unrelated to childbearing or athletics, it does put you just two years shy of 50, an age which happens to trigger various early senior-targeted promotions, housing options, etc., gets you on the AARP mailing list, and often places you in a new subcategory for purpose of polling, dating services, etc. 50 may be the age that kind young man held vaguely in his mind when he offered you the seat. It really is not that bad to look two years older than your age when you are hanging onto a strap on a swaying bus, tired after a long day’s work.

Or the young man may just have been offering his seat out of kindness unrelated to age or gender, or out of chivalry, and you may have misread his gesture. Or he may have been planning to get off at the next stop anyway, and just wanted to impress some girl on the bus. Or he may just have been messing with you.

My guess is that, when it matters, you can do whatever you need to do to look like a pleasant and attractive 48-year-old, maybe even a pleasant and attractive 38-year-old. Try not to let that one incident get you down. Or any future incidents: looking your age, or even a few years older, is nothing to cry about.

As a Certified P.C. and Uplifting Agony Aunt, I should probably add some exhortation to wear your age proudly: every line and wrinkle a sign of a life lived fully, every gray hair a challenge to an ageist world, your pooching tummy and varicose veins the proud badges of motherhood, and so on. (And I do note from your nom de June that you seem to have forgone hair dye until now.) But we all know about preconceptions and discrimination, and about the current obsession with appearing younger in almost every culture where people can afford it. In this country, where on our good days we seem to be moving beyond race- and class-based standards of attractiveness (and overall worth!), we are not doing so well where age is concerned. Most women over 40, and many over 19 if we can believe the skincare ads are openly trying to look younger than they are—to the point that, if you don’t join in, you can end up appearing older than your chronological age. You may even be perceived as not caring about your appearance, or lacking discipline and self-respect—you know, letting yourself go.

So—even if doing so may play into the hands of ageist bigots—I have plenty of sympathy for wanting to look youthful, and for being distressed when you don’t. But try to seek some balance. Do what you need to do to feel comfortable in your workplace and your subculture. (Mine seem to virtually require those Spanx things on certain occasions, but surgery is derided and golden highlights are optional, and the whole process seems to follow some sort of parabola where, at some point, trying to look younger moves from obligatory to unseemly.) But please, please also keep in mind that old age is in the eye of the beholder and, in any case, is not a bad thing in itself. The next time somebody offers you a seat, take it if you are tired and, if you are feeling rested and energetic, refuse it graciously—we certainly don’t want to discourage acts of kindness. Then try not to dwell on the interaction. Just think of these little incidents as inoculations against having a total meltdown the first time some pimply cashier asks you whether you want the senior discount.

On the other hand, I would be firm with any boy scouts you may encounter. I think they have a monthly quota or something, like meter maids, and it is so annoying to have to wait until they are out of sight before you can head back across the street.

La Wally’s Response: That sucks, but some people are idiots. Or maybe the guy on the bus just knew he was younger and thought that was enough. Don’t get too upset about it. If you don’t think you are old enough to take somebody else’s seat, then don’t.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on February 1, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Awkard Interview and the Unaccountable Pride of Jefferson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on January 12, 2018 by thwackFebruary 1, 2018

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?


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

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Published on January 12, 2018 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Handsome Trumpster and the Incorrigible Cousin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 8, 2017 by thwackDecember 8, 2017
 

Dear June, 

Is it okay not to date a guy because he’s a Trump supporter? By the way, this guy is wealthy and really good-looking, although I can’t say his looks really turn me on.  

—Turned Off in Turnersville

Dear T.O.,

It is okay not to date somebody for just about any reason. We therefore need not even consider your specific reason—although I will point out that, if this guy’s being a Trump supporter is a turnoff, many of his other beliefs and attitudes probably will be, too. So unless he has recently awoken from a long coma (ballpark: he came to last week after being insensate for 40 years or his whole life, whichever is longer) I would steer clear of him.

A night with good friends, or even with Ben and Jerry, is better than a date with someone who does not attract you and whose views you abhor. Besides, there are plenty of anti-Trump fish in the sea. More every day, one hopes.

La Wally’s Response:
Do not date him! Run!

 

 

 


Dear June,

My cousin Peter lives nearby. In fact, he and his parents each have apartments in the same condo—and my parents do, too. I tell you this because it is hard not to see and interact with him quite often, especially now that both our sets of parents are getting older and depend on us more for companionship, rides to the doctor, shopping help, and so on. Actually, I provide most of the help, but that is a small part of the story and something I can deal with.

What I am finding much harder to deal with is the way everybody bends over backwards to accommodate and cover for Peter. And make excuses for him all the time. And let him take advantage of them. And try to get me to buy into all this.

Peter has always been a selfish, moody, manipulative, and dishonest human being. When we were little—he is three years older—he used to bully me and torment me until I cried. Luckily we lived across town from each other then, but when we did get together he would get me to do his chores, or make me promise not to tell about all the bad things he did, like stealing from my mom’s purse, or letting the parakeet out, by threatening to expose me in some way, either by telling a secret he had somehow found out, or by outright lying. He was very good at making up believable lies. One time he crossed the train tracks and said that, if I either told on him or didn’t cross along with him, he would tell my mother that I’d bragged about being smarter than him—which is exactly the sort of behavior that would have made my mom too mad to ask for any verification—and, anyway, I was proud of my brains, and how could 11-year-old Peter have made something like that up?

As we all got older my parents started to see how difficult he was, and were sympathetic and supportive when he was obnoxious to me, or tried to weasel out of helping his own folks and make me take over. They also stopped letting him take advantage of them, which he had started to do—things like borrowing and dinging their car, or getting them to watch his horrid little dog, who tripped my Mom and sent her to the E.R.

But now he has been diagnosed with mental illness, and all of a sudden he and everybody else seem to think that having a couple DSM numbers assigned to him gives him an official license to be as obnoxious and selfish as he wants. He even brings the awful dog to family gatherings because he says she is now an emotional-support dog. My poor mom was afraid to get out of her chair during her own birthday party, and I am pretty sure she had an accident.

It seems that I am back to ferrying all four parents everywhere and also being asked to do little favors for Peter that I know he can do himself, like taking his cat to the vet or choosing and wrapping his family’s holiday gifts for him—for which I get reimbursed only partially, if at all, and after much nagging. And, of course, I now have to host holiday dinner for everybody in his family and mine, including a cadre from his father’s side, none of whom I had even met until they showed up this past Thanksgiving. The other day he asked my parents for their car again, and they gave in right away, even though Peter has a great job and plenty of money and could easily buy his own car, much less call the occasional Lyft. He seems to love to ask for favors like that in my presence. Sometimes I swear that he is taunting me.

What can I do? Does having a diagnosis of mental illness give people some sort of free pass?

—Bitter in Baltimore

Dear BiBa,

Some people with debilitating mental health issues cannot be held accountable for their actions, and really do require assistance in almost every aspect of their lives. But your infuriating cousin does not seem to be one of them. Like other health problems, mental health problems fall along a continuum. You have not said what Peter’s diagnosis is, but from your description of his life pre-diagnosis, along with his currently holding down a “great” job, it sounds as if he functions fairly well despite his mental problems, and would probably continue do so even if he had to arrange and pay for his own Lyfts, vet visits, and holiday gifts, perhaps even host a family dinner now and then. If, as you and I both suspect, Peter is quite consciously using his diagnosis as a license to behave like a jerk, he should be held accountable for his jerkiness.

On the other hand, there may be times when whatever is ailing him does require some accommodation. But where do we draw the line, and why do we draw one at all? Your letter raises the broad philosophical question of free will and determinism: that is, are we all, both the “healthy” and the “mentally ill,” hard-wired to behave as we do? Or are the healthy among us free agents, while those labeled mentally ill are somehow less free and therefore less accountable? I tend to believe that we are all determined, by our brains and bodies and environment, to do what we do. But I also strongly believe that—except in cases of the gravest mental illness, where people experience an altered reality or have a severe, demonstrable lack of impulse control—the determinism-free will issue is not especially relevant as a practical matter. We have to function as nations, families, and social groups, and must therefore set up rules where actions have consequences and free will is presumed—although the presumption is pragmatic rather than factual, and rebuttable rather than absolute.

Let me dismount from my high metaphysical horse and put this another way: there are gradations of mental illness, and Peter’s illness does not seem to be so severe as to rebut the presumption that he should he held responsible for what he does. He may well need understanding and assistance sometimes, but, from what you write, he seems to be playing the diagnosis card way too often.

It is true that one benefit of Peter’s diagnosis is that, if accurate, it can help explain his conduct and give those around him new grounds for understanding and compassion. Peter’s diagnosis, especially if properly explained by a disinterested expert (not Peter, I am thinking), may help you to grasp his needs and motives, which may in turn lead you to make excuses or accommodations for him on certain occasions. But these should not rise to the level where they damage other people’s lives. As a psychologist I sometimes consult assured me, you and your family have the right and duty to take care of yourselves.

Peter has duties, too. His diagnosis should add to his self-understanding. And this understanding will create new responsibilities for Peter. He will need to help himself—by getting treatment, taking medication if warranted, and perhaps making changes to his environment and habits.

I hope that Peter is getting some therapy or counseling, and that whoever is providing it lets him know that that he cannot use his diagnosis as an excuse to manipulate those around him. I also suspect—bearing in mind that I do not know Peter’s diagnosis, and have no credentials to evaluate it in any case—that not making a habit of giving in to Peter may be part of what he needs. Learning to stop taking advantage of his elderly relatives and regularly imposing on his cousin may prove quite therapeutic for him. But even if it’s not, you need to protect your parents, and possibly his. Resist Peter when he goes too far. Run interference for the older generation and warn them if they will listen. Set firm limits. You need some time for yourself, and you need to improve the situation enough to keep your admitted bitterness in check. Even—perhaps especially—when it is justified, resentment corrodes the soul.

La Wally’s response:

No, he does not get a “free pass,” but maybe you should still adjust how you feel about the situation. Don’t worry so much about what he gets out of it—just take care of yourself and the old people.

.

.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on December 8, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Incredible Escaping Dog & The Brother’s Would-be Keeper

Cleaver Magazine Posted on November 12, 2017 by thwackNovember 13, 2017

 

 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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on November 12, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: And What if I DON’T Want to Talk About My Rape, plus The Husband with the Ominous Locked Trunk

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 17, 2017 by thwackOctober 17, 2017

Dear June,
Almost ten years ago, when I was in college, I was raped by a stranger. They never found out who did it. It took me several years and some poor choices before I got over the experience, but I believe that I am now fully recovered not especially afraid or angry, and no more flashbacks. In fact, I rarely think about it. And even if—despite all the evidence, including my terrific marriage—I am not fully recovered, it is not something I choose to discuss unless I have a good reason, such as helping another person.

I especially don’t choose to discuss it with my friend “Maggie,” but she keeps raising the subject. She must have done this a dozen times in the past year. Sometimes she comes at it sideways by working it into the conversation—like when she asks me whether I think my own experience colored my response to sexual violence in a news story, or a book our group just read, or a TV show. (Game of Thrones has been a treasure trove for her.)  Other times she is more direct. She will ask me to talk about the rape or its aftermath, and when I tell her I won’t she says stuff like that she is “puzzled and troubled” that I shy away from the topic, and wishes I would open up to her. 

I always make it clear that the subject is off limits. At this point she will either shake her head—with this really annoying sad, knowing expression—and acquiesce. Until the next time!  Or she will remind me that she is a therapist and say that she knows she could help if I would only let her.

Getting Maggie out of my life is not really an option. We work in the same hospital, and she is engaged to my brother and pretty much part of the family these days. (I introduced them, which I am coming to regret.)  Besides, we have had many good times together and I do value many other aspects of our friendship.

So what should I do? 

—Closed in Cleveland.

Dear Closed,
Rarely have I been more tempted to say: “Oh, just go ahead and punch her lights out.” But I doubt if that would work. With your luck, she’d probably go all wise and understanding on you. I can see her standing there, holding one or more bags of frozen peas against her face and trying not to gloat while she explains that your issues are even more serious than she’d thought.

Besides, it would be wrong. Much as we might like to, we can’t go around rearranging the faces of our friends, especially friends who are brides- and relatives- to-be. Next thing you know we’d be brawling in the streets, or tossing paper towels at desperate hurricane victims.

You do have to be firm, though. Unless you’ve left out something important—like that you frequently vomit or hyperventilate or turn to drugs in response to a host of  triggers, or that you have never actually discussed what happened to you with anybody, ever—it sounds as though you are indeed doing just fine without outside assistance. And even if you could benefit from he services of, say, a therapist, Maggie should not be among your top 100,000 choices, given that she is your personal friend, will soon become your sister-in-law, and has been raising the topic of your sexual assault in completely tone-deaf, officious, and borderline creepy ways.

There should be a special little anteroom in purgatory for people who persist in offering unwanted and unnecessary “help,” leaving their targets no choice but to give in or face a series of unpleasant encounters. Maggie must be stopped.

Since you have already made it clear that you do not want her “help,” you are going to have to ratchet things up a notch. I suggest that you take the initiative here. Raise the subject yourself, but only to tell her that if she ever raises it again, you will be deeply offended.

Tell her that you have had (or, if this is this case, are currently receiving) all the help you need, that you are doing fine, and that you do not choose to reopen old wounds. Tell her that she needs to respect your autonomy here: she may believe that talking to her would help you, but you do not, and this is very much your party.

You know this woman and I don’t, so I am not sure how dramatic you want to get. But if it rings true and you think it might help, I would add that any request—much less any pressure—to discuss the matter just feels like a further violation. You could even go on the offensive, asking her to think about what her motives might be for insisting on discussing something when you’ve told her repeatedly that doing so would upset you.

As conciliatory touches, you could tell her that when (if ever) you feel the need to talk about the assault in a nonprofessional setting, you will certainly think of her. You could even add that she already gives you all the support you need just be being your friend and, now, part of your family.

If you say all, or even half, these things, you will be saying a mouthful. For this reason, and to give your words a sense of added seriousness, it would make sense to use some sort of written communication. But you, who know Maggie and have to live with her—and are probably youngish and not a lawyer—may see a letter, or even a series of texts, as too abrupt an escalation. If so, just find some gemütlich environment, preferably on your own turf, and talk to her. You can always write later. (When and if you do write, make sure to tell her that all you want from her is respectful silence, NOT any kind of written answer and certainly no further debate.)

Do you have a therapist or a former therapist you could consult?  A good therapist or counselor could help walk you through your showdown(s) with Maggie. (A less good one might want the session to be about why you resist confiding in Maggie, in which case I would resist the therapist.)  It might also be satisfying to be able to tell Maggie that your therapist has “urged you to assert yourself,” or some such.

Stand fast.In this one area, at least, Maggie sounds like very bad news. And spend plenty of time cultivating your other friends.

La Wally responds:
Say: “Please don’t ever mention this again. Ever. I mean it.”  If she still does, make sure you never see her alone.

.


Dear June,
My husband “Edward” has a large trunk in his home office that he keeps locked. He says that it contains old photos, letters, and keepsakes but won’t let me look at them. He tells me that when he gets around to it he will sort through the stuff in there, but we have lived together for three years, married for two, and he never has. When we moved last year, he just had the guys move the whole trunk.  

The other day he left his ring of keys home when we went out jogging. There’s a key to the trunk’s padlock on the ring —I know this because, I confess, I tried it out. But I felt guilty and stopped short of actually opening the trunk.

Do you think that I should go ahead and open it the next time I get the chance?  And do you think I should be concerned about Edward’s secretiveness?

—Snoopy in Sonora

Dear Snoop,
No, I do not think you should open it—at least not unless you have good reason to believe that the trunk’s contents are not, in fact, limited to “old photos, letters, and [legal, nontoxic, odor-free, etc.] keepsakes.” I see no reason for you to intrude on Edward’s privacy. Except for the fact that they take up a bit more space in your shared home—and this should not really matter, since the trunk stays in his office—its contents do not strike me as relevantly different from documents and images on his computer. You wouldn’t feel right snooping there, would you?

I do have to admit that I can see how those “keepsakes” Edward mentions might somehow feel different from letters and photos, especially if they consist of more than documents. Although I am not sure why and have trouble justifying my position, I think I would have more trouble taking my mind off actual stuff—a single glove, a lock of hair, a scratched LP, a decrepit bong, whips, a lithograph, a Louisville slugger—than text and images. Even so, I think that here, again, you should trust Edward unless he has given you some reason not to, like spending lots of unexplained time locked in his office, or acting bizarre and defensive when you mention the trunk.

This leads me to your second question: should you be concerned?

Probably not, I would guess, although I wish I you had told me a bit more. Does he get bizarre and defensive about the trunk? Is he evasive in general, or about the trunk, or about his past? How often does the subject of the trunk come up? Do you have any reason to believe he ever actually opens the trunk, either to hide stuff in it or spend significant amounts of time visiting with whatever’s inside it?  Has he given you any other clues about what, specifically, is inside it?

And is there anything in particular you are nervous about?  Do you have any reason to think there is something in that trunk that relates to his current life, or to some sort of sordid or criminal past?  If not, I would not worry. We are all entitled to our memories and souvenirs, as long as we don’t dwell on them in ways that adversely affect our ongoing lives and the people who share them with us.

If you trust Edward, and if all that he has done and said so far is consistent with what he’s told you—that he has some old papers and mementos in there, and hasn’t gotten around to sorting through them—I think you should try to resist the lure of that key ring. If, for some reason, you do not completely trust him where the trunk is concerned, you might want to try asking him a few more light, good-humored questions about it. You could ask him if he has any old yearbooks, and are they in the trunk?  You could ask him what kind of “keepsakes” he has in there—sports trophies, a favorite old shirt, gifts from ex-girlfriends?  You could even offer up some information of your own, like: “I have a big box of ticket stubs and love letters in my parents’ attic—maybe I’ll go through them some time, too.” His answers may reassure you.

Or they may not, which would probably be good to know. If you feel, rightly or wrongly, that you cannot fully trust Edward or his commitment to you, this should give you pause. You should work on it. Seek counseling, perhaps. Talk with him about both your lives.

I hope you and Edward resolve both your trunk problem and your trust problem.

La Wally says:
I think it’s weird, personally. But I would not have married a guy with a locked trunk, and she did. She should ask again what’s in the trunk, in a nice way. If his answer makes her nervous or scared, then maybe she should look.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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: Matt Artz on Unsplash

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Published on October 17, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Terrible Tipper and the Utterly Atrocious Applicant

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 2, 2017 by thwackOctober 2, 2017

Dear June,

My father, who is 83 years old, is a good man but a bad tipper. I do not know if the world has changed since he was a young man just starting to take people out, or if it is some peculiarity of my dad’s, but he only leaves 15% (of the pre-tax amount!) if he thinks the service is outstanding. If the service is good or average, he leaves ten. If the service or the food is bad, he leaves somewhere between ten and zero. I have tried to talk to him about this, and I have let him know that most servers do not get paid very much at all and that the tips are what make them end up with a living wage, if they even do, but he does not accept this idea. He says that the point of tips is to give a little something extra to somebody who does good work—that that is why they are called tips, and that they are an incentive, yadda yadda yadda.

My dad and mom love to take my husband and me, and sometimes the kids, out to dinner. Since they live about fifteen minutes away, we go fairly often—at least once a month, plus many special occasions. He never lets us pay. As my mom tells me all the time, being generous to us is one of his greatest pleasures and a matter of pride for him. Although they are not wealthy, my parents are financially secure and live simply, and we never go anywhere fancy, so I do not feel bad about their picking up the tab. But I do feel bad about the stingy tips.  

The last time we ate out the service was fine, if not spectacular, and I saw that my dad had tipped what could not have been more than seven or eight percent. So I “forgot” my coat and ran back and left some more cash on the table.

 But I was not as sneaky as I thought, and my dad saw me. He returned to the table, shoved my money back into my hand, and told me that he knew how to take care of people and did not appreciate being second-guessed by his own daughter. I could see that I had really hurt his feelings, so I said something like “Sorry, just trying to contribute,” and we left the restaurant and dropped the subject. My husband, bless him, cheered my dad up quite a bit by asking for his opinion on various matters—the state budget, Tony Bennett, grout—for most of the drive back to my parents’ place.

If I do nothing, that will probably be the end of the matter. But should I do nothing? I do not want to hurt my dad’s feelings or seem unappreciative or like a goody-goody. But I don’t want to shortchange the wait staff, either.

—Furtive in Frankfort

Dear Furtive,

I had a similar problem with an older, very proud relative and terrible tipper who was fond of me and was forever taking me out for tête-á-tête meals. In some ways, my situation was worse than yours because I suspected that she could barely afford to pay for the meal, with or without a tip, so we would both end up ordering the cheapest items on the menu and the poor server would get a stingy tip on a tiny tab. On the other hand, my relative was far more gullible than your dad seems to be, so I would usually manage either to augment the tip surreptitiously or, once I left school and got a job, convince her that it would make me feel so pleased and grown-up if I could least leave a gratuity—which usually ended up being very generous because I felt so bad about all those special requests and substitutions Aunt Gert had asked for when ordering nothing but tomato soup with a zillion crackers or a side salad with double croutons, and eking out her one tea bag with five hot-water refills and enough extra creamers to build a good-size tabletop pyramid.

But your dad sounds much cannier. Especially now that you have been caught in an act of flagrant generosity, I don’t think you will be able to get away with even the cleverest running-back-to-the-table gambit, much less telling him that you (or, better, your husband) would be even happier about his taking you out so often if you could pitch in just a little by leaving the tip.

This leaves you with number of options, none of them wonderful.

You could stop eating out with your mother and father. But that strikes me as a terrible idea. It is almost always good for families to break bread together and, the tip issue aside, you all seem to enjoy these dinners.

Or you could try to discuss the matter further with your folks. It sounds as if you have already said all the right things to your dad, with no success. What about your mom, though? If you have reason to believe that she agrees with you on tipping, would she be willing to take up the issue with your dad? If there is any chance she might actually succeed in changing his mind, why not give it a try?

Assuming that you do not want to enlist your mother, or that enlisting her does not work out, you are left with either going along with your dad’s stingy tipping, or resorting to subterfuge. My vote is for subterfuge. I say this because I believe that your dad is clearly in the wrong here; and although respecting one’s parents is important, ensuring that workers get paid fairly when one’s parents are being pigheaded is more important.

If you do decide on subterfuge, you are going to have to work on living up to your nom de June so you’ll actually succeed at being furtive. If your dad catches you again, he is likely to be even more upset than before, and almost certain to be angry—unless you can mollify him with self-deprecating wit—you know, “the bleeding-heart overtipper strikes again.” (My own father would accept almost anything I did if I could make him laugh, especially at my own expense.) The strain and suspicion could carry over for many dinners out.

So how should you sneak? If you know the name of your server and/or the number of your table, you can always deliver or send a second tip the next day or at some later time. Or you can come to the restaurant prepared with an envelope, a twenty or whatever, and a note inside briefly explaining the problem. Then all you’ll need to do is head off to the ladies’ room. While there—much like Michael Corleone when he retrieves the gun hidden behind the toilet tank so he can rub out Virgil “the Turk” Sollozzo—you can hastily seal and address the envelope, then take it to a a discreet place, such as the bar or the hostess stand, where you can hand it off on your way back to your table.

Sneaking around could get dicey if you and your parents go to the same one or two or three restaurants all the time, and have gotten to know the people there. For one thing, your secret would be more likely to leak out. And even if it didn’t, making such a public issue of your father’s poor tipping among people who are acquaintances of a sort gives me pause: it does seem a tad ungrateful to point up your dad to them as a clueless, stingy tipper who needs to be fooled. (On other hand, if your dad is a frequent customer and consistently bad tipper, the wait staff will almost surely know all about it.) One way to avoid publicly dissing your dad would be to drop off several tips’ worth of money for the wait staff—or your usual server, if you have one—as a token of appreciation every so often, perhaps at the holidays. You could simply say that, since you are never the ones who pay, you never get to thank them. Or you could say nothing. But do your best to ensure that they know not to allude to the gift in front of your dad.

If all this sounds needlessly intricate or too stressful, you could try eating at those same restaurants without your folks, asking for the server you had before, and leaving a huge tip. Or, as an imperfect solution but one you may find easier to live with, you and your husband could just make a habit of extremely generous tipping whenever and wherever you pay for your own meals. This will be no help to the servers your dad short-changed, but it will presumably give both you, and whoever gets these small windfalls, a few happy moments.

La Wally says:
Try again to talk to your parents. Give them hard numbers. Servers do no have to get minimum wage. Servers where I live usually get paid $2.83 an hour from the owner, which never even covers taxes. The tips are supposed to make up for this. Sometimes servers lose money on a table that stiffs them because they have to pay the busboys a certain amount out of their day’s total tips.

I agree with June that you should try to tip your server secretly if your parents won’t listen, and that you should at least tip somebody if that doesn’t work.


Dear June, 

I have been in a writers’ workshop since it began five years ago. There are currently six of us, all prose writers, and we take turns presenting articles, stories, or parts of longer works.  

There used to be eight of us—all founding members—but last year two writers moved away at almost the same time. It has become clear to all of us that we would be better off with one or two new members, so we started looking around.

I think we are about to agree on one of the new members. But there is another prospect several people like, but I do not. “Tim” is a competent if somewhat cold writer, and his credentials are comparable to ours in terms of experience and publications. But I do not think he is a nice person, and I do not trust him. This is partly because I found the (admittedly very clever) piece he gave us to review shallow and gimmicky, and thought he was overly defensive when we gently critiqued it—but mostly because I know of him in another context. Tim and my sister “Angela” are both engineers who work for the city. Over the past year Angela has spoken to me several times about how much she hates working with him, how he is always belittling and even sabotaging the other employees. To hear her tell it, and I have never had reason to doubt her, Tim has been especially obstructive to her in particular, probably because she is a woman, and may have cost her a promotion she had been expecting.

I want to blackball him. Should I?

—Worried in Writersville 

Dear Worried,

I am leaning strongly toward “yes,” but wish I knew a little more about the situation.

Purely as a matter of ethics, I see no reason why you should feel obligated to accept Tim into your group. I doubt very much that yours is the only workshop he could join in the greater Boston area, so you would not be creating a real hardship for him. Nor do I see any reason to assume that Tim’s writing or critiques would be better than those of some future successful applicant for that eighth spot, so your blackballing him would not be depriving your fellow workshoppers of any lasting benefit. In fact, Tim sounds like the sort of terrible coworker who might well be an equally terrible workshop participant: not too many belittlers and saboteurs make good, constructive critics, or take criticism well themselves. There is a very real chance that Tim would tear one or all of you down, or even try to undermine or pirate somebody’s writing. Throw in his apparent sexism, and you have plenty of sound reasons—general pedagogical, organizational, writing-related reasons, I mean, independent of your own discomfort—to reject him.

In any case, if your workshop is like most longstanding, participant-run writers’ groups, the personal element can be very important. Unless the workshop you are in is extraordinarily formal, controlled, and impersonal, your own discomfort is reason enough to keep Tim out of it. If you are worried that his presence would make you nervous—about presenting your work, offering criticism, or even chatting with the group—or if you are simply afraid that knowing how rotten he is to your sister will keep you from enjoying the group, maybe make you attend less regularly, go ahead and vote no.

If you and the group do decide against Tim, try to ensure that Tim does not find out you vetoed or even voted against him, or that his treatment of your sister was part of the reason. You certainly don’t want to enrage him and make him even more eager to mess up Angela’s work life.

In fact, I see no point in your telling the group about Tim and Angela if you can offer a credible, more general explanation for your reservations. I hope that your group gives each member veto power—which is as I think it should be in smallish, longstanding workshops, where one discordant personality can destroy the group dynamic in no time. (Fun linguistic aside: I just looked up “blackball” to see if the term implied veto power, and came upon some great illustrations of ornate wooden boxes with black and white balls in them. The answer, by the way, seems to be “not always,” although the number of black balls required to, say, keep some upstart millionaire out of a moldy old gentlemen’s club was usually quite small.)

If you do have a veto, just tell the group that you find Tim carping and negative, and would not want him to critique your stuff. And, if it has a germ of truth, cite some aspect of his work or attitude that you think makes it better to pass him over and look for someone who is a better fit, or would fill a gap in the group’s expertise, or whatever. You’re a writer: I am sure you can come up with something. In fact, the cold, shallow writing and defensiveness you mention in your letter strike me as sufficient grounds for objection, Angela aside.

If you do not have veto power, and are having trouble convincing your opponents, you will have to decide—as a practical matter—how much you are willing to divulge and how hard you want to fight. Does the group contain people who are friends of Tim’s or have otherwise emerged as his champions? Do any of them already know about the situation with Angela? Does the workshop have a policy of confidentiality in such matters and, if so, do you think everybody will honor it? Have you talked to your sister about any of this?

To sum up: ethics and best workshop practice do not forbid, and may actually favor, giving Tim a miss, but the pragmatic aspects of the problem are not quite so easily resolved. If I were you, I would seek a solution where Tim is out, but his ego suffers as little, and your role in the process remains as quiet, as possible. If your workshop is any good, you and your fellow members regularly lay bare your hearts, souls, and creative insecurities, to say nothing of your stylistic lapses. You need to guard your soft writerly underbellies against the threat of predators and boors.

I hope Tim finds another workshop—and another job.

La Wally’s response:
I do not know anything about writing workshops. But Tim sounds like bad news as a person and nothing special as a writer. I would give him thumbs down.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on October 2, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Pious Possible-Partner and the Astrologically Unsuitable Suitor

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 19, 2017 by thwackSeptember 19, 2017

Dear June,

I met a smart, handsome man at an art opening last week. “Theo” and I ended up talking for the whole two-hour reception, then went out for coffee and closed down the place. He asked me out to dinner on Saturday and it was lovely. We like the same music and art and movies, have a similar sense of humor, care about the same issues, and vote the same way on them. Icing on the cake: he does fascinating work and makes a ton of money doing it. The problem—which begs the question, since I am about to ask you whether it actually is a problem—is that Theo turns out to be deeply religious. I am an atheist.

Now I am not sure he is even third-date material. Do you think we have a chance?

 —Skeptic in Schenectady (I’m not really in Schenectady, but I like the way that sounds.)

Dear SiS,

Hard to say. You do not mention which religion Theo follows, or tell us what being “deeply religious” means in his case. I can envision a happy relationship between an atheist and a devoutly religious person whose particular denomination, and practice, are more a matter of tradition, history, ritual, and ethics than literal belief in fact-defying scripture and dogma. Although probably less important, it might also help if the atheist and the believer came from a similar religious and cultural background.

I would hold out less hope if the believer thought of religion primarily as a belief system, especially if the beliefs in question were rigidly held and at odds with science, logic, and history, or if the person showed tendencies toward proselytizing or intolerance. My hope would dwindle further if the atheist and the believer came from different backgrounds although that might conceivably cut the other way: I can see some atheists’ being more likely to tolerate or even appreciate someone whose beliefs seem exotic and therefore life-enlarging, as opposed to someone who practices a religion that hits closer to home, perhaps the very religion the atheist’s family still practices. And I can see a believer’s being more comfortable with an atheist who had never explicitly rejected the believer’s faith and tradition.

Since you do not mention any specifics, I suspect that Theo’s being a believer per se is what concerns you. If so, it may be wise not to proceed any further.

But you also sound as if you think he is otherwise such a catch that you’re considering being a bit more flexible. If he he strikes you as equally flexible, and if he has given no indication that his religious beliefs would be especially obtrusive, the two of you might want to keep dating for a while and, among other things, explore this issue further.

Even though flexibility is generally a good thing, I don’t mean to imply any value judgment by using the term here. (Nor do I mean to imply that atheism, or religious belief, is inherently less flexible and more dogmatic than agnosticism. For my part, I hold fairly rigidly to the belief that we cannot know Who or what exists beyond the material world.)  You have every right to choose not to date someone if your beliefs are not compatible. Indeed, if you’re worried that you could never respect Theo’s beliefs, or that you would respect him less because of them, you would not be doing anybody a favor by working toward a long-term relationship.

Is it a long-term relationship what we are talking about here, by the way? If not, I’d be more inclined to go for it: unless Theo is a snake-handler, or starts speaking in tongues when you least expect it, a divergence in core beliefs might actually enliven a longish fling.

From the way you describe your similarity in other matters of taste and value, I would guess that Theo’s religious views are not especially literal-minded or fundamentalist. If you do decide to keep dating him but are not certain about this, be vigilant—I doubt whether you could be happy with even the most clever, handsome, and rich of men if he ever said anything to you about how God did not make Adam and Steve, or if he asked you to make room for his guardian angel at the breakfast table.

Most important, be sure to look out for signs of evangelism. It would be very hard to enjoy dating, much less building a life with, someone you knew was looking to convert you. If he is like almost everyone else on the planet, Theo would be equally averse to your wanting to change him. Don’t try.

Are children an issue? If they become one, you and Theo will of course have to address the question of their religious upbringing or lack thereof. Reasonable advice columnists can differ on exactly when the balance shifts between avoiding premature conflict and staving off potential heartbreak. My own tendency would be to broach the subject fairly early on, but in a general, theoretical sort of way.

Your third date—only the second official one, really—is probably a bit early to start worrying about buying an extra-large box of granola together, much less building a life and raising a family.  I will nevertheless leave with a memory of one mixed-belief marriage that worked out fine.

My sainted mother—who would have guffawed at being called “sainted,” which is one of the many reasons everyone loved her—was a thoroughgoing agnostic, deeply skeptical in matters metaphysical and constitutionally averse to any kind of religious dogmatism. My father—also a very good person, a rare mixture of kindness, wit, and urbanity—was a devout old-school Catholic, an all-or-nothing believer who frequently said things like: “Blow ye either hot or cold.” I asked my mother once how she and Dad dealt with their religious differences, and she said that it was never a big deal because “religion is so personal.”  As for why she had agreed to our being raised Catholic, she said that this seemed only fair because Dad was the one with the strong beliefs. “And it never gets in the way of how we live. It’s not as if he were a Republican or something.”

Her attitude mystified me a little, and still does. But I do understand that she respected his strong faith, and that he respected her basic agnosticism, or at least explained it away as the inevitable result of her Episcopal upbringing. They lived happily together for over 50 years, until the end of his life.

La Wally’s response:
If you think he would judge you, or you would judge him, quit now. Otherwise do whatever feels right.


Dear June,

I don’t know what to do. I recently introduced my best friend Amy to a wonderful guy. She says that she really likes him but that she cannot even think of dating him because he is a Taurus. She says she has had terrible experiences with Taurus men before, and tells me her astrologer agrees that any more Taurus-dating would be a big mistake given their incompatibility as life partners for her. How stupid is that?

 —Blindsided in Binghamton

Dear BnB,

Pretty stupid, I would say.

I have nothing against astrology as a fun pursuit, or even as a way to draw on ancient lore, rich metaphor, and vague, universally applicable, skillfully constructed bits of advice and character analysis. Sometimes almost any system can help people know themselves better and learn from one another. But to rule out approximately one-twelfth of the world’s potential romantic and life partners based solely on birth date strikes me as idiotic.

Could there be more to it?  I almost hope that Amy is being less than honest with you, or herself. Is it possible that she found the guy unimpressive for some other reason, and gave you the old incompatible-sign excuse in order to avoid offending either you or the guy?  Or that she can’t admit to herself that she just doesn’t like him, or is not ready to start dating again just yet after those terrible experiences she mentions?

If Amy is serious about her blanket Taurus ban, you can at least comfort yourself that a wonderful guy may have dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t you hate it if he grew to depend on her, only to be summarily rejected when she learned that his moon was in Leo?

I hope and trust that Amy has lots of other sterling qualities to balance out her being a Taurus bigot. As I seem to be saying a lot lately, people should never feel that they have to date anyone they do not wish to date. But it would also be nice if people, especially best friends, were not airheads.

La Wally says:
I am not sure what BnB is asking. Of course it is stupid. But it’s Amy’s choice.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on September 19, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Trump-loving In-laws and Outed at Safeway

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 30, 2017 by thwackAugust 31, 2017

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.”

 


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on August 30, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Patriarch with a Past and a Spouse on the Spectrum

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 16, 2017 by thwackAugust 16, 2017

 

Dear June,

I am in a quandary about sharing a letter I got from my second cousin “Gary,” who recently died at 77 of a heart attack.

I did not have contact with Gary’s family for many years, and I always wondered what happened to them. I loved them, but when you move hundreds of miles away bonds get broken. A while ago I found pictures of our extended family and friends at birthday parties, including one of all our parents—Gary’s and mine—celebrating at a club before their marriage. I tracked down Gary’s work address through Google, and wrote a short note, something like: “You might think it strange to hear from someone after all these years, but I thought you might enjoy these photos.” He wrote back immediately saying how happy he was to hear from me, and wrote a five-page narrative of his life since we’d last seen each other (when we were freshman at a Massachusetts college). In subsequent emails he sent many photos of the children from his three marriages, and told me about the wonderful decades with his last wife and their son.

I’m thinking of asking Gary’s son if he would like to read the account of his father’s life, but I don’t know whether it is ethical to share emails that may have been written in confidence. The son wrote to thank me for the childhood photos I sent to the huge listserv of Gary’s friends and family. Gary had often shared photos and thoughts on that listserv.

The thing is, his autobiographical narrative contains material parents might not want their children to know about. Gary was quite a mischievous adolescent and got kicked out of several schools. His uncle and father had both been well-known doctors and all the males in the family were expected to go to med school, but Gary hated pre-med. When he finally convinced his parents to support him in studying for the career he wanted, architecture, he became quite focused, excelled in his field, raised four wholesome children, and mentored many others. His obituary headline referred to him as “Beloved Architect and Teacher.”

The autobiography also mentioned his mistakes with marrying too young, and then later marrying a terrible woman on the rebound. He was quite a good writer and had a really good sense of humor tinged with upbeat reflections on the past. As he looked back he was sorry that he had caused his parents so much trouble. 

June, do you think I should offer to send his son a copy of his autobiographical summary?

Hesitant in Harrisburg

Dear Hez,

Probably, but I would like to know just a couple more things to be on the safe side. From the “thoughts” Gary liked to share on the extensive listserv, I get the impression that he was open about—or, at least, did not especially want to hide—his past and his opinions. Nor does being a “mischievous adolescent,” even to the extent of getting kicked out of school, sound like the kind of dark secret that should be preserved beyond the grave from someone’s middle-aged son, especially when the decedent’s second cousin already knows all about it. Unless there is something you have not told me—say, if Gary was known for being reticent where his kids were concerned, or if his “mischief” involved the kind of turpitude that might really shake up a child—I see no harm in sending Gary’s son the e-mail. In fact, I bet he knows the gist of it already; but even if some aspects of Gary’s misspent youth come as a surprise to the son, it may be heartening or even inspiring to read about how Dad pulled himself together once he felt able to pursue his chosen vocation.

I am more concerned about the two previous marriages than the adolescent misbehavior. I have been assuming, as your letter seems to imply, that the son in question is from that third, happy marriage. But there are three other kids, and it sounds as if at least some of them were from the earlier marriages—either the youthful mistake, or the marriage to the “awful woman.” If your correspondent is a product of either of these marriages, I would read the letter carefully to make sure there’s nothing in it—no new information, no harsh judgments—that could hurt his feelings. And even if he is from the “good marriage,” you should alert him to any content that might offend his half-siblings or their mothers, and warn him to redact it before posting it where they might come across it.

Gary’s son sounds as candid and curious as his father, and as eager for family information. Unless the letter disses Mom—his mom, that is, not one of the other wives—or reveals some truly repellent youthful misconduct on Gary’s part, I am sure that his son will be delighted to have it.

La Wally’s response:
June will have to handle this one. Part of me thinks the son has the right to know. But how do we know whether it will be hurtful to him?

.

.


Dear June,

I have been with “Luke,” as I’ll call him, for four years—since my junior year in college—and married for two of them. It’s easy to say this now, but looking back it seems to me that, even before we got married, I had a sense that something was not quite right. Luke was never very talkative or demonstrative or even warm, really. But in some ways I was drawn to that: I talk a lot myself, and am maybe kind of messy emotionally, and his reserve seemed like a sign of some sort of masculine power—you know, the strong silent type. Maybe I was masochistic or insecure, or maybe just naïve. But that doesn’t really matter at this point.  

Anyway, for the past year at least he seemed to be getting worse, or I noticed it more. He insisted on more and more rules for how we lived: we always had to eat the same things, cooked exactly the same way, and sit in the same chairs, go to bed at exactly the same time, stack the dishes in the same way. He totally lost it when I came home with a different brand of paper towel. But I always knew he was fussy, and I think I could live with that. What’s worse is that he hardly ever looks me in the eye, never says anything affectionate, almost never touches me except when we have sex, and never kisses me at all except for symbolic pecks on the cheek when he leaves or arrives home. If I ask him whether he loves me, he says “yes, of course,” but I swear that he has more emotion in his voice when he asks me to pass the green beans.

Sorry. I am getting to the point here, really—which is that I got so concerned about our marriage that I convinced Luke to go with me to a therapist, and she had him tested, and it turns out that Luke is “on the spectrum,” as they say. It seems that, although he is very high functioning in the sense that he has a job in tech where he gets a lot of respect and makes plenty of money, Luke has most of the indicia that put people on the autism spectrum.

June, I was looking for help, not a diagnosis. In a way it is kind of a relief to have an explanation for what’s wrong. But I don’ t think it solves very many of our problems. I’m not sure that Luke really respects me or that I interest him very much. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to live with his unromantic nature and his rigid routines for the rest of my life.

But now I feel stuck, since I vowed to stay with Luke in sickness and in health. It would be terribly hard for him if we split up: I know how much he hates change. Am I morally obligated to stay with him? What should I do next?

Terrified in Tenafly

Dear Terri,

I do not believe that you are morally obligated to stay with Luke simply because of your marriage vows. Of course, some people hold the ethical or religious view that the marriage bond is unbreakable, or that it can be severed only in a few very limited, well-defined circumstances such as adultery or desertion. But I am not one of these people. You married young, and have only been married for two years. Your husband is financially independent. I assume there are no children. If you do not see any chance of real happiness or fulfillment in your marriage, you should not doom yourself to fifty unhappy years because of an ill-considered promise you made at the start of your adult life.

Nor do I think that, by itself, Luke’s diagnosis changes much as regards your obligation to the marriage. The moral equation might be different it he were facing a life-threatening illness or one that required daily nursing-type care—but, as Supreme Court justices are wont to say, this is a question we do not need to reach. The diagnosis Luke received (which, by the way, is usually thought of as a difference rather than a “sickness”) provides a partial explanation of behavior that you both already knew about, and that you were already starting to find difficult to live with. This explanation does not create any overweening moral obligation on your part.

I don’t mean to imply that you should completely exclude Luke’s diagnosis when making decisions—ethical and pragmatic—about your marriage, including whether or not to end it. Learning about the autism spectrum may give you and Luke a better idea of how, if at all, you can hope to change what needs to be changed about your relationship; and it may help you and Luke better interpret one another’s words and actions. If the two of you are both willing to work with experts in the area, you and Luke may discover that knowing he is on the spectrum will help you find tools to accommodate each other more and make the marriage work better. And if part of the problem is that, although Luke respects you and loves you passionately, he has trouble expressing himself, or has never quite understood why he needs to do so, his diagnosis could be a catalyst for real conversation and even change.

But your letter suggests a deeper rift. If you are (or become) convinced that—spectrum or no spectrum—Luke does not love and respect you as you believe a husband should, and will not change, you should leave him.

And no matter how Luke feels about you, you should not stay in the marriage if you no longer love him. Did you notice that your letter is silent on the issue? You may have thought that your love for Luke, or perhaps your current lack of it, went without saying; but your letter creates the impression that you consider the question whether you love him to be almost irrelevant. It is not.

Mutual love is essential. So, also, is basic compatibility. Although many loving couples do manage to work through daunting daily-life conflicts, I can certainly imagine a scenario where the increasing rigidity of Luke’s routines, and his lack of expressiveness, would make life with him a constant trial for you no matter how much the two of you loved and cared about each other. If this is (or becomes) your situation I would, once again, advise you to leave the marriage while you and Luke are still young and relatively unencumbered and will have plenty of time to make new lives for yourselves.

La Wally’s response:
I disagree. Terri wanted to find an answer and she did. Now she should work with her husband if she loves him at all.
.

.
.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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 Patronized Matriarch and the Evasive Vacationer

ASK JUNE: The Snobbish Sister and The Secret Sickness

 

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Published on August 16, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

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

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 4, 2017 by thwackAugust 4, 2017

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.

.

.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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

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Published on August 4, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Painting and the Abstemious Friend

Cleaver Magazine Posted on July 26, 2017 by thwackSeptember 28, 2017


Dear June,

When my parents moved to a smaller place this past winter they gave us some of their furniture and art. One of the works of art—to use the term loosely—is an oil portrait of me at sixteen, basically copied and enhanced from a prom photo, that had been languishing unseen in their attic for years. It is very expensively done, all by hand, with a frame worthy of a Sargent. I actually looked forward to owning it, and was pleased when my husband “Max” said how much he liked it and suggested that we add it to the paintings in our downstairs hallway.

But now Max seems to like it too much, and it creeps me out. He stares at it all the time, and even copied it onto his phone—to look at when he is away from home on business. One time I saw him standing in front of the portrait and kind of shaking his head. When he noticed me he looked around almost guiltily and then shrugged his shoulders and said: “Man, were you hot!” He has told me several times that he wishes he had known me back then. And he keeps showing the painting to male visitors. When he does this he strikes me as weirdly proud and possessive.

I wish we had never gotten the painting, and want to take it down. Should I? How do I explain it if I do? And do you think I am overreacting? 

—Middle-aged (and feeling older every day) in Mount Airy

Dear Golden Mean,

I can’t really tell whether you are overreacting, but the situation does sound odd and distressing. Have you told your husband what you’ve told me? Does the man know how upset you are?

I think that you should give him an inkling. It might be a good idea to keep the tone light, at least at first: although it does seem that he is the person making a fool of himself here, you don’t want to rush into any needless drama and come off as the one who is turning what is ostensibly his appreciation of a painting into a serious competition between you and your younger self. But I would let him know that it’s time to stop talking about the beauty and hotness of Painting Girl and turn his attention to the woman who has the benefit of being corporeal, extant, of legal age, married to him, and standing right there.

I don’t know enough about Max to gauge his levels of self-centeredness or self-awareness. It is possible that Max sees his open attraction to the painting as funny and cute—it is amazing how often people think their most foolish, distressing stances are actually some sign of adorable originality. He maybe even see his attraction as a kind of compliment to you, either because he has never really separated you and Painting Girl in his own mind or because he thinks that you, too, take a proprietary pride in your teenage beauty. If any of this is the case, he may just lay off once he realizes that his admiration for the painting was, or became, hurtful and in no way cute.

I wish I could tell more about your relationship from your letter. For example, is your sexual and romantic life with Max otherwise satisfying? Does he also have more current photos of you on his phone? Has he ever openly lusted over other underage girls (HUGE minus)? Has he given any indication that what he likes most about the painting is that he sees something of the current you in it (medium-sized plus)? If he really does seem to be obsessed with the painting or the girl in it—and not simply as some aspect of you—this could be a sign of a major problem in your marriage, and his character. In fact, if you feel so neglected or unappreciated that his interest in the painting strikes you as a real threat, this is reason enough to take the matter seriously. In either of these cases, you will need to go beyond the light touch I recommended earlier and have some weightier, more somber conversations with Max. Unless the results of these conversations exceed your expectations (and mine), I further recommend that you seek some professional family counseling.

But what to do about the painting? You should do what you want. The painting is a portrayal of you; it was a gift from your parents; and its presence has been a strain on your marriage. Each of these, to my mind, is sufficient reason for you to take control of the painting and do pretty much what you like with it. If you do decide to remove it, I’d just make the change while Max is away and put a beautiful wedding picture, or a flattering enlarged contemporary photo of the two of you (if you’ve got one, or can create one) in its place. How could he object?

If you and Max resolve the matter so amicably that her presence no longer bothers you, the least fraught option may be to keep Painting Girl around. Or you may not be sure what you prefer or how things will turn out, in which case you can always put her on probation. If you discover that this image of your younger self still makes you feel as if you are your own sister-wife, or perhaps Bette Davis in Sunset Boulevard—or if you catch Max ogling her again!—by all means give her the boot. Put her in the attic, or see if your parents might like her back. Better still, give her to—or, if they are still too young, save her for—someone in the younger generation. If you are like most of us, you will probably actually enjoy the thought of your descendants seeing and admiring your younger self.

La Wally:
That is a little strange. And creepy. I have to agree with her there. I’d just ask Max why he is so obsessed with the painting. I wish I knew how long they had been together. If they have not been together long and his answer is also creepy, she and the painting should both get out!

Dear June,

My best friend, whom I will call Jess, and I always take the day off work on our birthdays—hers is in August, mine in February—and treat each other to an extravagant, lavish lunch with plenty of wine and dessert and calories. We have been doing this for almost fifteen years now. We both try very hard to keep the dates open, and have only had to switch maybe three times (sick kid, court hearing, flu). It turns out that this year I can’t make it on her birthday because my husband is having minor surgery. But when I asked Jess what other day would work for me to treat her to our fancy August lunch, she told me that she would have to pass this year because she is on a (weight-loss) diet and is afraid that, if she indulges herself on more than one day—birthday dinner with her family, then birthday lunch on another day with me—she will start to backslide.

I can’t believe that she is being so rigid and dismissive. This has been our tradition for fifteen years, for God’s sake, and you’d think she could pace herself and switch the calories from one day to the next, or whatever. I tried to explain my side of things, and she said she was sorry but refused to budge. How do you think I should handle this? 

—Spurned in Spring Garden

Dear Spurned,

Unless your friend is anorexic or bulimic, or does not actually have a weight problem and is just trying to put you off for some bizarre reason, I think you should handle this by taking her at her word and respecting her self-assessment. Presumably Jess is concerned about her overall health and well being, and knows what rules or limitations she cannot afford to disregard. You do not want to distress her on her birthday, or undermine her efforts on any day.

I am guessing that you have not spent much time trying to stick to a diet—or, as we are now supposed to think of it, a nutrition-related lifestyle change. Doing so can be wicked hard, and the smallest setback can lead to disaster. So please, be understanding. If I knew more about the situation—for example, if Jess is pre-diabetic, or obese, or has yo-yo’d before—I might also advise you to apologize for your insensitivity.

On the other hand…did you suggest any alternatives? Was she saying no to any lunch, or just the hi-cal lunch? Assuming that Jess can take a second day off or free up an evening, what about going out for sushi or gourmet salad, or just having a glass of something (vintage wine for you, Vintage seltzer and lime for her) and heading out to a matinee, museum, spa, pedicurist, arboretum, pool hall, karaoke bar, zoo, boat ride, you name it? You could still pamper Jess and yourself, give her the usual thoughtful presents, and have fun playing hooky together from your jobs or your spouses.

I do hope that, over time, Jess will be able to make some exceptions to her birthdate-only rule and the like. One may laugh—I just did, about three paragraphs ago—at made-up-sounding expressions like “lifestyle change,” but the fact is that it is hard to sustain any mode of living, much less one involving food, where you feel as if you are in a state of crisis and deprivation. Like Lent, these states imply an ending—and then what? So I hope that Jess is keeping up on all the literature about making eating habits sustainable, and I hope that, over time, she develops a system that can accommodate the occasional date change for semiannual wicked lunches.

It’s quite possible, though, that she has been cursed with the kind of metabolism and willpower that require a lifetime of strict rules and extraordinary vigilance. If this is the case, let’s hope you can block out your dates far enough in advance to keep those pesky jury summonses and scheduled surgeries from interfering with Jess’s rare moments of self-indulgence. You probably can’t do much about the flu, though. If one of you gets sick, you’ll just have to pretend that sushi and tea are as exciting as red wine and things called Death by Chocolate. I have heard that some people actually feel this way.

LaWally:
Can’t they just go somewhere that works for Jess’s diet? People who have been adults—and friends!—for at least 15 years should be able to deal with this.

.
.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on July 26, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Hopelessly Distracted Bibliophile and Impossible Best Friend

Cleaver Magazine Posted on July 19, 2017 by thwackJuly 19, 2017

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?

.

.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on July 19, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: On Upbraiding Bullies and Chastening Chatterboxes

Cleaver Magazine Posted on July 10, 2017 by thwackJuly 10, 2017

 

Dear June,  

The other day I was in a fast-food restaurant, hiding from some home repair people and trying to do a little work while enjoying endless refills of Diet Coke, when a family sat down at the next booth. It was a mother, a father or stepfather, and two little kids, maybe 4 and 6. The kids started acting up—nothing terrible, just blowing on their straws and shouting while they played with the small toys that had come in their meals and stuff like that. But the father kept telling them what little brats they were, and then he started threatening to smack them. It was clear to me that he and probably his wife hit them fairly often. Anyway, things escalated, the kids started whining, and the man started talking in this loud, creepy voice, reminding them that they didn’t want a “repeat of last night.” Then he slammed his fist on the table and the kids started to cry.

I got more and more upset—and when the dad slammed his fist down, some other customers started shaking their heads and raising their eyebrows at one another and so on. Finally, without really thinking much about it, I stood up and told the couple that corporal punishment is against the law in our state and that if they made good on their threat I was going to call the police. And I added something about how nobody wanted to hear any more of their abusive language, but by then I had started to trail off.

Luckily for me, nobody was packing heat or anything, and all the guy did was call me a fat whore (he was half right) and tell me to shut up. There was a hush in the restaurant, but nobody else said anything. I am pretty sure that, on the whole, they thought it was stupid and embarrassing of me to have caused a scene. Nobody looked at me. The family finished its food and left. I stayed a few minutes longer, partly to avoid having to interact with them and partly because I was still shaking. Then I packed up my laptop and got outta there. 

Did I do the right thing? What would you have done? 

 —Vocal in Vorhees

Dear VoVo,

I like to think that I would have had the courage and initiative to do something, and I believe that your response was brave and admirable. You did take a risk, but when kids are in danger, most risks are worth taking. Given all the time in the world, you might perhaps have come up with a better way to approach the situation. For example, you might have taken a somewhat less antagonistic tone, maybe even spoken with a tinge of sympathy, saying something like “Eating out with kids can be a pain in the butt, but you’re out of line.” Or you might have looked around to see if there was a competent-seeming manager on the premises, and quietly asked that person to step in. You might also have asked the abusive man if you could speak to him privately, so as not to publicly embarrass him and the kids.

But I am not sure any of those alternatives would have worked any better. The manager or employer might have refused, or proved less effective than you, or sucked you into a controversy or even a brawl. The less antagonistic tone may have come off as condescending; or the man might have totally discounted you as effete and ineffectual. And it’s easy to imagine how taking the man aside could backfire. In fact, one of my readers has pretty much convinced me that asking the man to get up would have been way too risky: it is unpleasant to contemplate what a bully like him might have said or done to you once his family and the others were out of earshot.

Although the odds may be against it, there’s a chance that your speaking up had a positive effect on the couple. One or both of them may have needed to be reminded—or, if they come from abusive backgrounds, put on notice—that their behavior is viewed as abnormal and serious by some people, including one total stranger and a passel of lawmakers. While there is also a chance that your small intervention may have backfired—that the man may have directed his shame and anger against the kids and hit them harder than usual when they got home—I still believe that in this case, as in most cases where the outcome is uncertain but the wrong is obvious, it is better to speak up than not, and better to make an effort than to accept defeat.

Bear in mind that, although your confrontation may have led to unintended bad consequences, it may also have led to collateral good ones. Perhaps your speaking up for them just made those poor kids feel ashamed; but, then again, perhaps it gave them some glimmer of a sense of self-worth and bodily integrity. Maybe it made them start to realize that there are adults out there who will take their side.

Your actions may also have effected some small shift in the minds of the other customers, giving some of them a deeper sense of just how unacceptable family violence is. Maybe a few of the other customers—parents and kids—talked about the incident over dinner that night, and one of those parents or kids will never forget that dinner conversation. You never know when something you do or say will matter and live on. By the way, those customers who kept quiet were probably just risk-averse, not disapproving. I bet that at least some of those silent customers did not find you “stupid and embarrassing,” but were impressed by what you did, and envied your courage. And if they didn’t, so what?

Way to go!

La Wally’s response to Vocal in Vorhees: You did the right thing. Either way, you would have had regrets, so why not follow your heart?

 


.

Dear June,

I manage a medium-sized, two-screen art house theater. We used to be a quiet, polite crowd, but lately more and more of my customers are complaining about other patrons’ talking during the shows. We have the usual on-screen notices about talking, courtesy, and noise. We also rotate a few of those cute 15-second spots various sources send us about silencing cell phones.

What should I do? I am at the theater most nights, and would not mind making an announcement before the shows. I could also make a video for when I am not there.

I think the patrons who complain are 100% in the right, but I do not want to make everyone feel bad, and look bad myself, by sounding like an old curmudgeon who is scolding the audience. 

What do you think I should do?

—Irritated in Illinois

Dear Irri,

I am in complete sympathy with your aggrieved customers, and often find myself longing for the good old days when people sat through serious films in a sort of reverential hush. I do sometimes wonder if those days ever existed; maybe I just used to be better at blocking out distractions and hearing over ambient noise. No matter: either way, you and I are agreed that your patrons should not disturb one another with what my local theater calls “unnecessary conversation and noise” during the movie.

I think it is great idea for you to make an in-person announcement whenever you are around. If you want to sound like less of a scold, you could preface it with announcements about upcoming events or new concession items. But when you get to the meat of your message I would recommend at least a soupçon of curmudgeonliness. I would go beyond general remarks about silencing cell phones and not talking, and let people know that other customers have complained. I would also remind people, with a smile if you think you can pull off that kind of smile, that one person’s whisper is another person’s very audible comment. In your place I might also request that, if people have questions or comments about what is going on in a movie, they should hold their questions until it is over; and point out to them that, for many film patrons, the auditory elements– dialogue, music, sound effects, silences—are as important as the visual. But that might be a bit much.

One problem you face is that there are so many different reasons people talk during movies. One, of course, is that they are discourteous jerks. Or they may be trying to impress their date with their filmic knowledge and, in the first flush of infatuation, have totally forgotten that there are other people in the theater. Or they may be totally desensitized to interruptions after years of watching movies at home.

Another problem I have noticed in our local art houses is that some older moviegoers do not seem to hear as well as they used to, which creates the double issue of their not quite getting what is going on and not realizing how loud their voices are when they ask about it.

There is also, of course, the broader societal problem: not everyone seems to agree that, although it is in fine, and fun, to make some collective noise in big loud action movies, or to scream in horror films, most indie films and art-house offerings are best watched with a minimum of outside distraction.

If you know your audience, you can tailor your comments to it. You can also tailor your comments to the particular movie: for example, I have noticed that some people think it is fine to talk during movies with subtitles. It’s not!

As for making a personalized video for when you aren’t there, why not? If you do, I would keep my tone relatively mild, since many of your customers will probably see it many times. Deputizing other staffers to speak when you are not around could also work, if you think they would be good at it. And you could try having your ushers sit in the back of some of the more at-risk movies (the talkier, quieter, or more tragic ones) and actually call out any unduly noisy guests. This would show the people who’ve been complaining that you take the problem seriously. It would also be a great boon to patrons who are bothered by noise but endure it because they do not want to offend or upset anybody, or cause a scene. And it might work: one visit from an usher to one patron, and maybe everyone else will shape up.

I wish you luck. As one who recently writhed in agony during Manchester by the Sea while the man behind me talked over half the dialogue to ask his wife where they had seen various actors before, and to tell her which parts of the movie were funny and which were sad, I salute you.

LaWally’s response to Irritated in Illinois: There are ways to tell people to be quiet and be nice about it. I would definitely get up before every performance whenever you are there and talk to the audience directly. And I agree that it makes sense to have your staff sit inside with the audience during the performances if you can afford it.

..


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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: Roey Ahram on Flickr

 

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Published on July 10, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Greedy Cardiologist, the Discomfiting Barbecue, and Introducing LA WALLY!

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 28, 2017 by thwackJune 28, 2017

Dear June,

I am a 28-year-old social worker and single mom with one sibling, a 24-year-old brother who is in his next-to-last year as a medical student. Our dad died a little over two years ago after a long illness, and our mom died suddenly and unexpectedly last month of a heart attack.

My parents wrote up a will many years ago leaving everything to whichever one of them survived (it was mostly all joint property anyway), and then dividing the estate equally between my brother and me. But my brother is objecting to this, saying that my mother had been paying for his med school tuition and living expenses at the time of her death, and that the clear understanding was that my parents would always cover educational expenses for both of us until we finished school. (I have an M.S.W, and have no current plans to return to school, although the thought of a Ph.D. in the nebulous future is very attractive.) He is demanding that the cost of his next two years, until he gets his M.D. and starts his cardiology residency, should come off the top of the estate before it is divided.

My folks were not super-rich, but they were both retired government workers with great pensions (which survived him but both died with her), and they had a nice little house and enough stocks so that, after expenses and state taxes and lawyers and so on, the estate should be about $1,200,000. My brother proposes taking about $200,000 up front. This would mean that, instead of our each getting about $600,000, he would get $800,000 and I would get $400,000.

I consulted a lawyer, who looked at the documents and assured me that Kevin does not have a leg to stand on, legally. But what about morally? He is my orphaned little brother, after all. And Mom was paying for him while she was alive. On the other hand, I never heard her say anything about making any special provisions for Kevin, and I have heard both my parents say that the only fair way is to divide an estate equally between any kids. But perhaps they never believed they would both die before their younger kid got through school?

I do not want to sound greedy, and $400,000 is a lot of money. In fact, it represents almost ten times my current annual salary. What should I do?   

—Grieving in Grove City

Dear Grieving,

Kevin may be your orphaned little brother, but in six years or so he will be an orphaned little cardiologist. In the meantime, a paltry $600,000 should be plenty to get him through the next two years of med school and then to supplement whatever he gets paid during his residency and any fellowships. His sudden loss of your mom’s ongoing financial support may be a blow, but I would think that a lump sum of over half a million dollars will cushion the blow somewhat. (By the way, $200,000 sounds awfully steep to me for two years of medical school, even he is in one of the fancier ones, and pays thousands a month for rent and airfare and the like.

On the other hand, an extra $200,000 might mean everything to you and your child. Private school or music and art for her. Putting some money away, but still being able to start buying a house. Maybe even getting that Ph.D. some day.

Kevin seems to be making two arguments here. The first is that he relied on your parents’ oral, or perhaps merely implied, promise. Your lawyer has told you—and I agree—that any promise they made is not legally binding. I do not see why you should feel ethically bound, either. One reason certain promises have to be in writing is that, without written evidence, it is often hard to be sure what the person making the promise intended, or even whether there actually was one. If your mother considered the future at all, she may have thought or felt something like: “I will pay for Kevin as long as I live,” without ever questioning the overall scheme of equal division of her estate. She may even have thought something like “I will support Kevin’s education until I die, and then it can come out of his half.” Your parents had time, during your father’s long illness and your mother’s two years of survivorship, to alter the will. I suppose their failure to do so may have been an oversight, or the result of procrastination. Although I very much doubt it, they may even have assumed that you would fork over the tuition and expenses because of some tacit agreement you had never heard of before.

But it is just as likely—more likely, even—that they had their reasons not to alter their will despite Kevin’s still being in school. I can think of a bunch. (1) Your current income and future prospects are more modest. (2) You already have a child, which is a special current circumstance at least on a par with med school. (3) Any parental duties to pay for post-post secondary education end with death—which, in this case, is when the generous pensions that probably helped pay for this education also end. (4) An ironclad equal-division rule will prevent disputes and resentment. (That last one is actually the reason I would bet on, even though it happens to have been a bust in your case.)

Kevin’s second argument seems to come from a sense of fairness: that, since your parents paid for your entire education, they—via you—should also pay for his, death and the law notwithstanding. But there are other equally fair ways to allocate the largesse of parents, living and dead. One is to pay roughly the same amount towards each child’s education, in which case Kevin was probably already on the debit side by the time of your mother’s death. Another, as I mentioned earlier, is to pay both children’s reasonable education expenses for as long as there is life and income, and then to have the children draw on their legal share of the estate, or their own resources. After all, if you ever want that Ph.D., that is what you will have to do. (Somehow I don’t see Kevin coming across with money for your future schooling, if any, out of a sense of fairness.) And while it’s likely that, had she lived, your mother would have continued to pay for Kevin’s last two years of med school, she might also have eventually helped your daughter out with her schooling, or helped you pay for any number of things, including further graduate study.

I hereby give you ethical clearance to hold onto your inheritance! In fact, I urge you to do so. I wish I could also absolve you in the eyes of your brother, or assure you that the two of you will get past this dispute. Do you have any close relatives, perhaps aunts or uncles, who could mediate for you—not to arrange some sort of financial compromise, but to help Kevin understand your, and the law’s, position? I also suggest that you ask your attorney to get in touch with Kevin and present the situation in as cut and dried, and as dry, a way as possible, explaining that, by the clear terms of the will, half of the money is yours and half is his, as surely as if it had been sitting in your separate accounts since time out of mind. I hope that Kevin can come to see that what he, a future doctor, is doing is asking his struggling single-mom sister for a gift when he has just inherited more than enough money to send him on his way to wealth and success.

If he does not come around, you will have to decide whether his good graces are worth $200,000 of your money, or some part thereof. I do hope that you have wise and persuasive relatives, mutual friends, counselors, and lawyers who can help both of you, and that you emerge with both your inheritance and your sibling relationship intact.

By the way: no matter how the money issue or the relationship shake out, spending a small percentage of your inheritance on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation can be a great restorative. It worked for my family.


Introducing LA WALLY!

Sometimes I read one of your letters aloud to my adult daughter and ask what advice she would give. Her answers tend to be as short and pithy as mine are, well, not so short and pithy. Thinking that you might welcome the contrast, I’ve decided to include her reactions to this week’s letters. We’ll see how it works out—whether you like this feature, whether she clams up once I start publishing her responses, and how well I tolerate being upstaged.

Clearly she needs a nom de June. We considered the names of the original Cleaver family offspring, both boys, but she rejected “Beaver” for obvious reasons, and thought “Wally” too masculine and generally hideous. She was okay with “La Wally,” though. (Have you all seen the movie Diva? You should.)

La Wally’s response to Grieving in Grove City: He’s going to be a cardiologist and he wants to take money from his sister and his little niece or nephew? What a creep. Keep what’s yours!

La Wally’s boyfriend’s response: Fair is fair. Both get half.


Dear June,  

My mom and I live about twenty miles away from each other, in suburbs of the same city. Once or twice a month she will come into the downtown area, where I work, and we’ll have lunch or an early dinner together. It was at one of these dinners that she met my friends Lucas and Billy, a gay couple about my age, who happened to be sitting at the next table. Always gregarious, she invited them over to our table for dessert. The guys contributed some fancy dessert wine and everyone had a fine time. 

Everyone except me, that is. My mom means well, and I do not think she has an ounce of hate in her, but she is weird around LGBT people. Not homophobic or anything, just really self-conscious and nervous and all caught up in the person’s being gay. I think that one reason everything went okay when the four of us were having dessert was that Lucas and Billy had just been to a gay bingo extravaganza the previous night, so it didn’t seem all that odd that we talked about sexual orientation and drag queens for more than half the time.

But now my mom has invited them (and me, and a few other people) to a barbecue at her house for some of her famous ribs, and I am afraid of what will happen. She kept asking me to invite Billy and Lucas over and I put her off, but then we ran into them again at the same restaurant at lunchtime and she invited them herself. They seemed surprised but very pleased to be asked. Lucas especially. The other night he came over to my place for a cupcake while Billy was at tennis practice, and he told me that he was touched by my mom’s overtures, and that he really missed his own mom, who died two years ago and had been his best friend.

I would like to warn Billy and Lucas that my mother can be weird and intrusive, but I can’t think of a way to say it without making them feel that I don’t want them to come, or that I think my mother is just being friendly to them because they are gay. Both these things are true, actually. I don’t want them to come because I am afraid she will embarrass them. And I do believe that my mother would never have gone out of her way to invite them over if they weren’t gay—she has never been that single-minded with any of my straight friends. I don’t know whether she has some strange fascination for them, or whether she is bending over to be all liberal, but whatever it is, I don’t like it. 

Is there anything I should do? 

—Nervous in Narberth

Dear N in N,

The first thing you should do is relax. You may be misjudging your mom: maybe she just really likes Lucas and Billy and wants to build on the great time you all had over wine and dessert. And even if your friends’ being gay is a factor in her interest, that is not necessarily bad—so long as she is hoping for more diverse and interesting acquaintances, not specimens for her personal gallery of curiosities.

But even if her motives are questionable—and even if, left unchecked, your mom is likely to pepper the conversation with awkward, ill-timed questions about matters LGBT, or to tell your friends how much she used to just love Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—you still have time to check her. Find some time to talk, preferably in person, before the barbecue, and gently remind her that being gay is only one aspect of Lucas and Billy and that, to be on the safe side, she should probably leave it to them to bring up anybody’s sexual orientation, or LGBT-related issues generally. Say to her what I said to you: that she should just relax and enjoy the party and the company. Make sure she knows that they’ve already said how much they like her and how happy they are to be invited.

My guess is that she will behave, or that her gaucheries will be so minor that your friends will be more amused than upset. If it looks like she is going to seriously mess up—tell me she doesn’t get drunk at her own parties!—you will be there to make sure nothing really embarrassing happens, at least not more than once.

If you think it would help, there are ways to prepare Billy and Lucas without seeming unwelcoming. Just start by saying how thrilled you are that they agreed to come and how much you are looking forward to the party. Then say that you hope they will be patient with your mom if need be, because she sometimes gets too personal with people, and has very little experience outside her own straight, middle-class [if applicable], white [if applicable], middle-aged [if applicable], etc., cohort.

I am confident that Lucas and Billy can handle your mom—the chances are about 100% that they’ve experienced far worse from other members of the generation that preceded yours. I can see why you would feel protective of Lucas in particular, given his loss of his mom. But there is no reason to assume that he is looking for a substitute mother, or that he can’t handle a few missteps from yours, as long as she really is well-meaning and openhearted.

I suppose there is a slim chance that the barbecue could turn into a disaster. In the highly unlikely event that it does, remind yourself that social disasters are not the end of the world, and that it is worth risking them when there’s a far better chance that they’ll result in enjoyment, new friendships, and a larger view of the world.

Try to have fun! No matter what happens, there will be ribs.

La Wally’s response: The daughter sounds more awkward than her mother. The daughter should definitely let the guys know that her mom really likes them but can sometimes be clueless with gay people. She can also try telling her mom to dial it down, but after that she should just chill.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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 Maligned Male Member and the Mansplained Name

ASK JUNE: The Badly-Named Baby and the Word Goddess-With-Friends

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Published on June 28, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Maligned Male Member and the Mansplained Name

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 12, 2017 by thwackJune 12, 2017


Dear June,

Why does everybody think it is okay to use about a dozen informal names for the male member when disparaging men, but offensive to use the c-word , or the t-word, when disparaging women?

—Ticked Off in Teeterboro

Dear T.O.,

Although I agree that there are an astonishing number of nicknames for the penis, I can actually come up with only a few that are regularly used as insults. How many people say “That dude’s such a Johnson!” or “Don’t be a willie”?

I also disagree with your assessment that “everybody” thinks it’s okay to use the male terms and not the female ones. But I grasp your broader point. Besides, upon examination I find that I am one of those people who occasionally, in highly informal situations, use a couple of the less creative male-member nicknames (specifically, those ending in “ick”) to express extreme disapprobation for a man—almost always one I find overbearing and mean—but never, ever disparage a woman by referring to female genitalia.

Okay, so why do I, and many others, make this distinction? Is it fair and justified? Is it understandable, at least?

Although, of course, none of these words has any place in polite, scholarly, etc., conversation, I do find that the c-word (and the less-used t-word) crosses a line the p- and d-words and their like do not. The obvious reason is the relative power of men and women. I am not sure people say “honky” any more but, if they do, it strikes me as far less offensive, in almost any situation, than the n-word, given the history and current state of racism in our society. Similarly, words disparaging white people tend to, and should, become more offensive as their target becomes less apparently powerful—as with “poor white trash” or, if applied to an ordinary citizen and not, say, a powerful politician or someone who just shot you, “cracker.”

It also seems to me, although reasonable people (including one watching ESPN in the next room) may differ on this next point, that words like “prick” and “dick” actually connote a misuse of power, or at least an overbearing or nasty person. The c-word, on the other hand, is sometimes used simply as an expression of total dismissive contempt. This makes the use of the male-directed insults somewhat more understandable.

Justifiable, though? Although I have a soft spot for the judicious use of vulgar insults against the powerful and obnoxious, I can see why the higher-minded among my readers would object to the reductionism—and lack of linguistic originality—of ever referring to anyone, male or female, as a sex organ. Far be it from me to encourage moronic metonymy or simplistic synecdoche among this magazine’s exquisitely-educated readership.

If, as it appears from your letter, it’s not the reductionism and immaturity per se that bug you, but rather a sense of unfairness engendered (tee-hee) by your sense (however erroneous) that women have come far enough that they should be able to take as well as dish out organ-specific insults, you could always turn to gender-neutral naughty body parts for your name-calling. “Asshole” comes to mind.


Dear June,

How should I tackle men—or women, but so far it has always been men—who tell me that I pronounce my own name wrong? Sometimes it is young men who are peers, but most of the people who have “corrected” me are patrons or clients (I am a freelance artist and art teacher) I would not want to offend.

By the way, my name has a Gaelic root, and my parents chose a variant pronunciation of the name that is used in an old Irish ballad. So the pronunciation is hardly “wrong”—not that this matters.

—Corrected in Collingswood

Dear CoCo,

I don’t think we have to spend any time debating the merits of “correcting” people’s pronunciation of their own names. Either these men are trying to impress you—which seems gauche in the extreme, since they have picked one area where you are virtually certain to know more than they do—or they are trying to parade their knowledge, perhaps even establish superiority over you, which strikes me as both gauche and condescending, maybe even bullying.

In cases where you don’t need to worry about giving offense, there are any number of ways to respond to these benighted individuals. You could simply say: “Hey, it’s my name. I own it. Let’s move on.” Or, if you want to keep it light, you could smile and roll your eyes, then say: “How about we change the subject?” If you want to display a bit more irritation, you might look skyward and say: “I can’t believe you are telling me how to pronounce my own name.” If you have the urge to educate, you could try: “I’ve heard that maybe a hundred times, but thanks.” Or, if you want to add a note of self-righteousness, and perhaps even move them, this could work: “What’s good enough for generations of my ancestors, including my mom and dad, is good enough for me.”

If you want to be more pleasant, you could say something like, “So I’ve heard, but my folks liked the way it’s pronounced in an old song.” A response like that is also good because it works for just about anybody, from the callow youth who somehow thinks you will find his knowing about your “real” name attractive, to the pedantic art collector who wants to show off his superior education and put you in your place—and knows you are not in a position to take offense. In the latter case, you might use a slight variant where you refer to the song as “the famous old song,” or even recite its title, preferably in mellifluous Irish. Since the pedant probably won’t want to admit that he does not know a famous song, this should put an end to the conversation.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of an all-purpose answer. Having one will save you the time and trouble of tailoring your response based on motives and power relations. With luck, it will become second nature to you, and leaving you a little more time to devote to your art.

There may still be those who pester you about your name, and think that kidding you about it is an example of that horror some call “good fun.” And, to be fair, even genuinely nice human beings sometimes like to focus on one or more of another person’s quirks as a way to establish what they see as an easy familiarity. My dry cleaner does that. (I’ll spare you the details, but pet hair is involved.) If this happens to you, and the person really is well-intentioned, decide how long you are willing to put up with it and then let them off easy. (“Hey, enough with my name, okay? Just call me [Insert Correctly-Pronounced Name Here] and I promise I will never call you [Insert Some Silly Pronunciation of Their Name Here].” Then laugh.)

If the pesterer is one of those patrons/clients, and you have tried civil measures—making it quite clear to them that you have heard it all before and are fond of your name—you may just have to grit your teeth. But nobody should have to make you choose between your livelihood and your sense of who you are. If at all possible, charge those clients a little extra and try to get a bit more money, or at least free wine and cheese, from those patrons.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on June 12, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Badly-Named Baby and the Word Goddess-With-Friends

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 5, 2017 by thwackJune 5, 2017

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on June 5, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Stick-Shift Stickler and the Lovelorn Thespian

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 29, 2017 by thwackMay 29, 2017


Dear June,
 

A few months ago, a couple I’m friends with lent me their old but totally functional standard-shift car while they were away on a three-week vacation. When I told them that I had driven a stick shift car before, I did not add that it had never really gone well. Anyway, the third day I had the car I totally wrecked the clutch, so I had it replaced. The mechanic who did it is competent and honest, and a friend, but getting a new clutch still cost real money. When they got home I thanked them and returned the car, clean and vacuumed and full of gas and clean oil, but never mentioned the clutch.

My boyfriend says that I should come clean. I really don’t want to. What should I do?

—Red-faced in Red Hook

Dear Red,

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it is good to be honest with friends. And the knowledge that they have a new clutch may be of some value to them—perhaps by reassuring them that their clutch is in good shape, making it more likely that they will save some money by holding onto the car a while longer before replacing it; or, if they do decide to sell it, by helping them get a slightly better price. On the other hand, telling them might make them feel as if they should pay for the new clutch, which I assume you do not want them to do. I also assume that coming clean, especially now, would create some embarrassment and awkwardness for you, and might even put a strain on your friendship.

If I knew more about cars in general, or your friends’ car in particular, I might have a firmer opinion. For one thing, I would know more about the financial side of things—so I will just assume that the replacement was a major, but not a ruinously costly, repair, and that the car was otherwise reliable enough to be worth fixing. I would also have a better idea of how likely it is that your friends will find out that they have a new clutch—which could be awkward indeed. Too bad we can no longer ask Click and Clack about this. I did call a friend of mine who works in a garage, and she said that the clutch is not that easy to see in most cars, even by a mechanic unless she is looking for it—which rarely happens unless there is some issue with its performance. On the other hand, she adds, most drivers should notice a change—more play, better response—when a clutch is replaced. Since it appears that your friends are not all that observant where their car is concerned, there is a good chance they will never find out what happened unless you tell them.

I suppose they may, in fact, have noticed changes in their car’s responsiveness and might know, or suspect, what happened, but that they are as reticent as you about the situation. That would be odd indeed—but, as the one who actually knows these people, you may want to consider it. Have you picked up on any new strain in your relationship?

Well, then: assuming that your friends have no suspicions and are unlikely to learn the truth unless you tell them, we must decide which wins out: being honest, and perhaps conferring valuable knowledge, or avoiding embarrassment, and perhaps preventing your friends from feeling beholden and even forcing money on you?

Knowing what little I know, it seems like a tossup to me. If you insisted that I choose, I would advise you to tell them, since I value honesty and knowledge. But I am not the person who’d have to deal with your friends’ responses. These could be quite muted—“No kidding? Oh, well, no harm done”—but they could also include anger, amusement (and endless retellings of the story), disappointment, a sense of obligation, a sense of resentment over the sense of obligation, a sense of deeper resentment if they end up paying, a loss of trust in your driving and your honesty, etc. In fact, I am not sure I would take my own advice in this instance. It is hard to admit to being a bad driver and a secret car-repairer.

I therefore counsel you not to tell them if you are sure that they will insist on paying and will also somehow prevail upon you to accept the money, and if it seems that they do not have much money to spare. Otherwise, do whatever seems best to you, and don’t feel bad either way. It sounds as if you had mixed motives—generosity and fear of embarrassment—for getting the clutch repaired and for keeping the repair silent. But at least one of those motives was a good one.

P.S. Are you sure that clutch wasn’t ready to go already? A sometimes-reliable source tells me that it is not all that easy to destroy a healthy one. You do not seem to want to factor in the economic cost to you of a fairly major repair, which is generous of you. It is even more generous if the repair would soon have been necessary anyway. Of course, you made the repair not just without telling the owners afterwards, but also without asking them first, which complicates the situation somewhat. Still, if your friends have plenty of money and you do not, and if they are close friends, it would certainly not be wrong to include your own costs in the equation.


Dear June,

I have fallen horribly in love with my neighbor, who is my co-chair at our community theater company and has been in many productions with me. She does not know anything about it, and I will never tell her. I can’t think of any way I could get my family to move away, although I would almost like to, so that I would not have to see this woman any more. I have no intention of breaking up my family. I am happy enough with my wife and we have two kids and wish I could take a pill, or get hypnotized or something, to make this go away. What am I to do?

—Far Gone in Fairlawn

Dear Fargo,

Yes, you should indeed find ways to see as little of your neighbor as possible under the circumstances. You should also seek counseling right away.

I could not help but notice that, although you spoke of pills and hypnosis and moving away, which are all apparently impossible, you said nothing about quitting the community theater, which I am guessing is not all that hard to do, at least logistically. I am sure you have had wonderful times there, and leaving the theater may be a terrible emotional wrench, but your marriage may require it. If quitting is at all possible, and I am pretty sure it is, get out. I suggest that you announce that you need to go on indefinite leave because your job and family duties just don’t leave you enough time. Then make your announcement true by spending more time with your family.

Although I don’t always assume that feelings for some third party must be a sign that something is wrong with a person’s primary relationship, this is often the case. Your saying that you are “happy enough” with your wife does make it sound as if your problem is not only too much attraction to your neighbor, but also too little joy with your wife. A good counselor can help you explore whether this is true, how serious it is, and how you and your wife might start trying to fix it.

Do not hate me for telling you that this is my hope: you may just be having a difficult adjustment to the long haul of marriage and kids. If that is the problem, and if you truly do want to make adjustments, you should be fine. I hope that, by this time next year, your hopeless longing has dwindled to an occasional, bearable, maybe even pleasant frisson of attraction, and that all will be well with you and your wife as you ferry the kids to soccer and ballet, sweat over bills, and check each other for deer ticks. Or maybe, in your part of the world, it is driving the kids to hockey, sweating over chemistry homework, and coping with each other’s deafening snores and sleep apnea. But you get the idea.

Good luck! And get some counseling as soon as you can.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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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Published on May 29, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Gossipy Dentist and the Avocado-Lover’s Lament

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 22, 2017 by thwackMay 22, 2017

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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.

 

You may also enjoy:

ASK JUNE: The Cherry-Picking Chore Guy and The Dog-Kicker’s Lament

ASK JUNE: The Patronized Matriarch and the Evasive Vacationer

ASK JUNE: The Shell-Shocked Citizen and the Expectant (would-be) Spouse

 

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Published on May 22, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Financier Fiancé, the Smoke-Soaked Dad, and the Bitterness of Life

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 13, 2017 by thwackMay 13, 2017

 

Dear June,

Can a writer be happy married to an accountant? 

—Torn in Toronto

Dear TnT,

I don’t see why not. There are some very cultured and attractive accountants out there, and many of them are solvent. Marrying one might be a wise choice for a writer looking for love, companionship, and a steady household income.

But I assume that you have a specific accountant in mind, and I wonder whether your question isn’t really a sign that you’re afraid he or she isn’t exciting, supportive, or intellectually compatible enough to make you happy. If that is what concerns you, I certainly would not rush into marriage. But don’t rule out a whole profession while you’re at it—maybe the next accountant you come across will thrill you and inspire your best work, and you will find yourself downright eager to share a life, a home, and perhaps a Cadillac health insurance plan from the accounting firm with your entrancing new C.P.A.


Dear June,

I am five months pregnant. My partner and are both very happy about it. We have been together for several years and consider ourselves a stable couple. There is only one serious source of conflict right now: I gave up smoking a year ago when we decided to start trying to have a kid, and he still smokes. Lately the second-hand smoke has been making me sick to my stomach. He always goes out on the balcony when I ask him, unless it is raining or something. But he never just does it on his own. He does not have any plans to quit smoking, and I am worried about the baby. What should I do? 

—Expecting in Exton

Dear XX,

You should encourage him—not nag him, since that rarely if ever works—to give up smoking entirely. It is hard to think of a better time for him to quit than now, when he has the most compelling possible reason, and a whole new life and set of responsibilities ahead of him. I suspect that this is a long shot, and that you and his mom and his doctor and maybe an ex or two have already tried and failed to get him to quit. Do try again, though, if you think there is any chance at all.

If he can’t or won’t stop smoking entirely, you owe it to the baby to draw a line: there can be no smoking that may affect your child’s health, starting now. That means, at a minimum, that he can never expose your child—or you, while you are pregnant or nursing—to second-hand smoke. No smoking in any enclosed spaces, no smoking near you or your child even when you are outside. The evidence is clear that exposing kids or pregnant women to cigarette smoke is a form of child endangerment, and should be treated as such.

From his needing to be asked before he steps outside, and his feeling entitled to smoke indoors on rainy days, it’s obvious that he is not taking these health risks as seriously as he should—to say nothing of his apparent nonchalance about making you gag. You may be in for some tense conversations, even some conflict. But stand firm. A little unpleasantness beats a child with low birth weight, asthma, lung infections, and increased risk for grave or even fatal illnesses later in life.

It might help to take your partner with you to your next prenatal visit and have him hear about these prenatal and childhood risks from a health professional. If you think you can trust your provider’s good sense and discretion, consider calling in advance to make sure somebody other than you raises the subject and speaks about it forcefully and at length.

I really don’t think there is any room for debate when the issue concerns second-hand smoke and a baby, child, or pregnant woman—or any unwilling third party, for that matter. But some questions remain.

One is the matter of third-hand smoke, which is how some concerned health experts refer to smoking residue. There is mounting evidence that the smoke that collects on clothes, hair, rugs, furniture, and smokers themselves can be an irritant to healthy adults and pose a very serious risk to young children and to people of all ages who already have asthma or other lung problems. I am no authority on this, but you may want to look into it and consult your provider. You may decide that, as long as your partner is still smoking, your household will be doing lots of laundry and rug cleaning, taking down curtains, using air-purifiers, and keeping the place smoke-free even when your husband is alone there. More tense discussions, and more hard choices, may await you.

Another issue is how much second-hand smoke you’re personally willing to tolerate outside the home after your baby is weaned. I don’t feel that I know enough about your health, your relationship with your partner, or your values to advise you here. It would be great if, knowing that you would just as soon not risk getting sick yourself, your partner would simply decide never to smoke in your presence again. If that doesn’t happen, you will have to make some decisions, either case-by-case or by establishing some general rules. As a former smoker, I can sort of—but only sort of: memories of how addiction feels tend to fade—understand how your partner might resent your never letting him smoke around you even when you’re both at a party, or huddling in a doorway, or sitting in a ward committee room, or wherever people still smoke these days. After all, you knew he was a smoker when you got together, and you shared the habit for several years. There are many sensible answers if he expresses his resentment, but being sensible isn’t much of a match for addiction, or even desire.

Good luck to you and your growing family. I hope that, even if he cannot make himself give up cigarettes entirely just yet, you and your partner can agree on rules that will keep your home safer. With luck, these rules will also have the effect of making him smoke less and less as time goes on—until his son or daughter is old enough to look up at him with enormous teary eyes and shame him into quitting for good.


Dear June,  

Thanks for the list of favorite poems. I really appreciated most of your choices. But Lewis Carroll? Seriously?? And no Dante, Chaucer, or Pushkin? Not even William Carlos Williams?

—A Fan in Frankford (Again)

Dear Frankford Fan Following Up,

I do understand. Bear in mind, however, that we were talking about a few of my favorite poems, not the ten best poems of all time.

And did you even read “The Hunting of the Snark?” I’m not sure about Dante or Pushkin, but Chaucer would definitely have loved it. Furthermore, consider this Lewis Carroll stanza:

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practiced on a fife;
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
‘At length I realise,’ he said,
‘The bitterness of life!’

As an encapsulation of the human condition, you have to admit that those six lines are right up there with Williams’ red wheelbarrow.

Now—as Carroll writes in “You are old, Father William”—be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs! 


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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 credits: iStockphoto (no babies were harmed in the making of this photo!) and (for the Lewis Carroll illustration) Hathi Digital Library Trust, Pennsylvania State University

ASK JUNE: The Deathbed Jezebel and Ze Pronominal Protocol Problem

 

ASK JUNE: The Cold-Hearted Writers Group and the Soft-Hearted Dog Daughter

 

 

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Published on May 13, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: The Patronized Matriarch and the Evasive Vacationer

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 8, 2017 by thwackMay 8, 2017

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.


ask-june-square-for-facebook-no-border-300pxCleaver’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

 

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Published on May 8, 2017 in Ask June. (Click for permalink.)

ASK JUNE: Dating the Milk Man and June’s Top 10 Poems

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 30, 2017 by thwackApril 30, 2017

Dear June,  

I read your letter from the woman whose date stole a bottle of rosemary from her cabinet, and I thought you could help me with my problem.

Recently I went on a first date with a guy some friends set me up with. He took me to dinner at a very nice restaurant. Everything was going pretty well for a first date. I thought he was cute, if not super handsome, and we had some things in common as far as books and politics and basic life goals are concerned. But then came dessert. I ordered a slice of their famous chocolate cake with raspberry butter cream icing, and he said he would have the same. He asked me if I wanted more wine, and I said no and ordered tea. He ordered a large glass of milk!

I was totally turned off by this. What do you think of a man who orders milk with his dessert on the first date? Am I wrong to object to it? Or not to want to date him again?

—Disappointed in Denver

Dear DD,

Your question perplexes me. I had no idea there were rules about how many dates you need to go on before ordering milk with dessert.

But I am intrigued by why his doing so turns you off. Perhaps you just think it’s totally uncool and unsophisticated to order milk instead of, say, espresso or a glass of chilled Vouvray with what you imply is a fancy cake, in a fancy restaurant. I would disagree: in my experience, milk pairs well with almost any kind of chocolate cake, or cookie for that matter, and the only reason I never order it in restaurants is because they rarely have good nonfat milk. (I know, nonfat milk with rich cake is sort of silly, but it is what I like, and that is the point.) Tastes differ here—I mean, if tastes can’t differ when we are talking about what tastes good, when can they?—and I do not think ordering milk with chocolate cake is ipso facto uncool or gauche. If he had added that his mom still brings him milk and cake every night before she tucks him in, that would be another matter.

Since it seems important to you that this was a first date, perhaps you feel that, by ordering milk, he was not worrying enough about making a good initial impression. But this position assumes that he realized, or should have realized, that ordering milk with cake at a fancy restaurant is a social faux pas, like wearing sweatpants or picking your teeth at the table—and, as I said, I disagree. I actually find it refreshing that your date ordered what he wanted, not what some snooty waiter or patisserie snob might think he should have pretended he wanted. Of course, your date may be such a rube that it never occurred to him that he was flouting any convention—if, indeed, he was. Or he may have realized that not everybody orders milk with fancy restaurant cake, but have already felt comfortable enough with you to be himself. In your place, I would have liked him better for not putting on airs. But, then again, I like milk-drinkers.

If the milk-cake pairing is your only objection to this guy, you may be missing out on a good thing by never going out with him again. Do you really want to discount compatibility where books, politics, and life goals are concerned because of a man’s beverage preference?

All that said, there is no right or wrong here. Nobody has an obligation to go out on a second date. I hope and suspect that his ordering the milk was only part of what turned you off: if you had otherwise found your date charismatic and delightful, the milk might have seemed like a minor lapse, or even a charming quirk. But even if your reaction really was all about the milk, that’s fine. If, for whatever reason, you two did not click, you don’t have to endure another dinner with him. In its early stages, at least, romance is as much a matter of taste as dessert.


Dear June,

Since it is National Poetry month, I was wondering if you could tell us your ten favorite poems—the ones that have had the greatest effect on you. And why you chose them. Thanks! 

—A Fan in Frankford

Dear Fan,

I thank you for your question.

I am finding it hard to answer, though—which is why I am getting this in just under the wire, on April 29. For one thing, if I took your question literally, I would probably have to include some pretty bad poems I learned as a kid and loved to recite for many years afterwards. I will therefore omit Longfellow (despite the noble Hiawatha’s mittens, made with the skin side inside) and Joyce Kil